seabasstion

1) That graph just shows where you two were at the end of the day I believe so that isn't the best metric either but youre right - it does go to show they had buying power. there are several ways it could have happened but all pretty much have the same effect. so in the hour between my scrape and then declaring war they bought tanks. Or this could easily have the same effect as declaring and then building, or declaring, attacking, and then rebuilding so the conclusion is still valid as i was more demonstrating the point of how the old score system wasn't necessarily behaving as what the game intent may have been. at any rate though this observed effect you felt from stella would have been just as likely. are you really going to argue that the potential extra 800 tanks stella may have bought (since neither of us can say for certain they did) before declaring on you was the cause behind this curbstomp? when they could have just as easily declared and then bought them? that you would have had a fighting chance if it wasn't for that?? i think you are kidding yourself if you think stella would have bought out of range before declaring on you if the new score were in place. i think it is much more likely they would have declared then bought their 800 tanks under the operation of the new system. in all reality though the issue whether the buy happened before or after the declaration is irrelevant to my input on that portion of the discussion since i was more or less addressing your clear opposition of the new score system rather than the actual nuts and bolts of this retroactive issue. i personally dont care if they did or they didn't - i care that a pretty military heavy 8 city nation build could have declared on 50 nations with 5 cities or less in the old system. an effect which i feel is indicative of something wrong so my points are still valid and mathematically sound at that snapshot 1 hour before they declared on you. with this new system that number is lowered to 3 nations with 5 cities or less. whether they bought an additional 800 tanks AFTER that analysis doesn't invalidate any of the figures or statements i made on that snapshot. 2) lol OK - that is an interesting opinion; good luck with that

Well that's quite rude. To answer your question no I am not being purposefully obtuse. All your wars had expired by the time I saw this and you never had mentioned what specific war you were talking about. All I was trying to do was answer your request for data pulling. I'm sorry if I annoyed you by not inferring the correct war when I was trying to help you with your question. to answer your initial request for data though, 1 hour prior to stellaland declaring on you: hereno: 7 cities, 6821.12 infra, 77094 soldiers, 1051 tanks, 468 planes, 0 ships, 0 missiles, 0 nukes, 0 projects . old score = 644.22 new score = 795.62 stellaland: 8 cities, 3881.84 infra, 45947 soldiers, 4400 tanks, 695 planes, 4 ships, 0 missiles, 0 nukes, 0 projects. old score = 625.07 new score = 1045.52 so i think this is a pretty novel case for why the score change was made. anyone could look at this and see that stellaland has a built in advantage in the military. almost 4x the tanks way more than makes up for 30k soldier deficiency. also stella has an additional city for bigger daily buying power and more planes. in a 1v1 it would be a no brainer barring inactivity or purposefully poor strategy that stella would be able to beat you. yet stella actually had a lower score than you in the old score system. this isn't necessarily the problem though. the problem is who else stella could have down declared on on this already low score. a 625.07 down declare could go as low as 468.80 in the down declare. at the time of this data pull there here are the nations by city count stella would have been able to declare on: 4 cities: 4 5 cities: 46 6 cities: 134 7 cities: 165 8 cities: 152 9 cities: 101 10 cities: 70 11 cities: 19 12 cities: 10 13 cities: 1 14 cities: 2 15 cities: 0 16 cities: 0 17 cities: 0 here is a graph of this distribution it is pretty easy to see there are many more nations they can down declare on than updeclare on. when the game is designed so that you should realistically only be able to down declare 25% and updeclare 75% it is pretty indicative there is a fundamental problem with this score considering military strength is largely tied to city count. the common response we've heard is that if they carry a big military it wont be an issue but we ive just demonstrated that through that philosophy there were 4 nations that get 'rewarded' with a big military by being in the range of someone with twice the city count they have. and another 46 that can have this nation with 60% more cities than they have declare on them. if we compare it to the new score system this is the city distribution based on the declaration ranges of 784.14 -> 1829.66 4 cities: 0 5 cities: 3 6 cities: 16 7 cities: 73 8 cities: 105 9 cities: 131 10 cities: 168 11 cities: 98 12 cities: 67 13 cities: 45 14 cities: 16 15 cities: 7 16 cities: 4 17 cities: 3 i think this distribution better encapsulates the idea behind 25% downdeclare 75% updeclare but that is just my interpretation on it. sheepy may have a different vision on it but it stands to reason that if military might is very tightly controlled by city count, then to keep bigger more powerful nations from having the ability to pummel smaller nations at will they should be limited in their reach. not eliminated...just limited. so to answer your question: yes, you would have been in his range prior to the score update and after the score update. infact you would have been an 'updeclare' for him prior to the score update and barely in range after the score update. i think this serves as evidence that it wasn't ideal before

what war(s) are you referring to when you say?

is it the war with donsy land declared on 3/26 at 726pm game time? at 621pm game time on 3/26 hereno had an old score of 587.2 (7 cities, 6621.49 infra, 22085 soldiers, 0 tanks, 468 planes, 1 ship, 0 missiles, 0 nukes, 0 projects) . this is a new score of 712.6 at 621pm game time on 3/26 donsy had an old score of 749.4 (8 cities, 7588.63 infra, 116916 soldiers, 25 tanks, 580 planes, 0 ship, 0 missiles, 0 nukes, 2 projects) . this is a new score of 929.4 587.2 / 749.4 = 0.784 (in range) 712.6 / 929.4 = 0.767 (in range) i dont have a data point between those missing 65 minutes

come here boy!

correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't the score update address this concern? looking at the top 10 - here are the number of nations that can declare on them as of the current system current system 300 spartans - 44 mirrania - 68 grand central - 71 eastern sweden - 86 numars - 98 rapture - 98 scotland - 115 lower kalla - 123 Nueva Granada - 126 the byzantine empire - 138 new system 300 spartans - 105 mirrania - 73 grand central - 98 eastern sweden - 112 numars - 93 rapture - 223 scotland - 237 lower kalla - 140 Nueva Granada - 156 the byzantine empire - 230 this is an average of 50 potential enemy nations more for each top 10 member that can now declare on them. only one of these nations (numars) shows a decrease in enemy exposure with a drop from 98 to 93. additionally when you look at the mega infra no military builds that have been mentioned (i'll choose the highest current nation score with a military score <10) https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=9551 they currently have a score of 3738 and can have 167 nations declare on them. under the new score formula they will have a score of 2696 and can have 413 nations declare on them. that is almost 2.5x more nations will be exposed to as a whole im very perplexed about the general narratives of these threads. if the people that are in opposition value to updeclare more compared to the downdeclare curb stomp wont having a bigger reach up to the top be more beneficial to their strategy? =============================================================== i believe the intent of this score change is focused on trying to prevent situations where a large city advantage can be had which corresponds with a huge built in advantage on the down declare - it doesn't do anything to hurt the updeclare model at all. if we use dan77's nation as an example (since it has been referenced several times in these threads already) we see that as of today's nation stats he can down declare 1125.75 nation scores and updeclare to 2626.75 here are the city counts of nations in range current score 8 cities: 9 9 cities: 38 10 cities: 114 11 cities: 115 12 cities: 105 13 cities: 85 14 cities: 58 15 cities: 35 16 cities: 18 17 cities: 7 18 cities: 0 19 cities: 0 20 cities: 0 total = 584 avg infra = 21213 here are the city counts of nations in range new score 8 cities: 0 9 cities: 8 10 cities: 21 11 cities: 42 12 cities: 46 13 cities: 50 14 cities: 53 15 cities: 47 16 cities: 24 17 cities: 14 18 cities: 13 19 cities: 4 20 cities: 2 total = 324 avg infra = 27537 ============================================================================ so yes, while dan would be losing 260 targets in total he would be exchanging this quantity for quality. 205 of these 260 targets have 11 cities or less so if targeting bigger, more profitable builds with higher infra is his strategy i fail so see why there is staunch opposition by claiming it allows for big nations to beat up on small nations and untouchable nations to keep untouchable. not only is the big nations to beat up on small nations mathematically false (205 smaller city targets from dan have been eliminated), but his target list favors bigger nations that he can now hit with reach into the 20 city builds if we count from 13 cities (his city count) and up, old score he has 203 targets. new score he has 207 targets. so again, taking what has been said in these threads as factual i'm genuinely perplexed why there would be such staunch opposition from the raiding groups as you have a much more valuable reach, even being able to access high militarized whale tier nations. for no military whale tier nations they have almost half the active game that can hit them now. ============================================================================ so tl;dr - saying untouchable nations are futher untouchable is false as they are more easily accessible now, the valuable updeclare reach is lengthened at the expense of the lower unprofitable region that the opponents of this change themselves say they dont prefer to target. coupled with the 40% buff i am struggling to see how this is negative for raiding nations aside from a larger pool of similarly built/military capable nations would now be in score to be able to defend/counter . i can understand if this is the reasoning behind the opposition since you would be losing a lot of built in protection, but the opposition-provided reasoning behind much of the opposition when you look at the practical application of it is largely false and/or misinterpreted in my opinion. edit: and to say that i am for this change for self serving reasons would be a false statement. a score change like this opens up a lot of additional exposure both for myself and the 'spartan' build. i actually view this change as bad for my game and am in the process of making the appropriate changes to better suit a strategy with my existing build in this new score system.

Lol whoops

oh how cheeky

Tis a good day

I think he is implying that this strategy of high city high improvement low infra is mostly sustainable by nations of this build preying on nations within the same score range. Nations in the same score range largely have little chance to defend themselves since military strength is mainly tied to city numbers, and nation score is largely tied to infra numbers. This is the fundamental problem in many people's eyes in the quest for a reasonably fair war declaration range The nations that are radically updeclaring as you call it are actually just declaring on nations more on par with their true military strength most of the time since military strength and nation score are largely unrelated. Additionally with the mechanics of the game heavily favoring the attacker this initial attack will go a long way toward victory, typically a crushing victory after the opening attack in a 1 v 1. and with the -25% downdeclare limitation it is difficult to find multiple militarized nations to counter that both have the military troops to do so while simultaneously being in declaration range for this proper response you speak of. It literally took test destroying multiple thousands of infra to be able to respond in a forceful meaningful way. I don't feel this should be a requirement to be able to craft a good response. So in essence you answered you own question....with proper response it probably isn't sustainable but the mechanics of the game are very prohibitive of a proper response and is mainly supported by raiding inactives in a rotating gray cycle by nations more equal in score. It would be a tough sell to convince a reasonable person that most of these nations are hitting nations with at least 1.5x their score. Its probably a significant number (and I haven't looked into it so I very well could be wrong), but I'm willing to bet this isn't the case the majority of the time But back on topic the updeclare really isn't the scope of this topic. (at the risk of speaking on behalf of pre) The topic at hand is largely over powered nations relative to their nation score peers being able to largely act with impunity at the current score formula. This is hard to justify as a fair system for a nation with twice the city count fighting someone. You can claim there is a proper response but from what I've seen it takes extreme counter productive measures to do so and if we take a step back and look at things objectively there probably wouldn't be many nations doing this if there wasn't a distinct advantage in doing so (and have been doing for some time now). That or the proper response is to follow a similar type build of purposefully stagnating your infra to keep a low infra score component. As a core fundamental principle I will disagree with a function or system that restricts game play options . I know I'm not a military wizard but these type of builds are largely impervious to conventional 100 infra = 2 improvement builds which is the standard designed model. If the standard designed model fails at a very high rate (against anything) I think it is reasonable to qualify this as an imbalance and perhaps the fundamental mechanisms should be evaluated There is a fine line between using game mechanics to your advantage and using poor game mechanics to your advantage. What actually defines a 'poor' mechanic is incredibly subjective but I think when you take everything else out of the equation it is hard to qualify a 1 v 1 fight where one nation can have twice as many cities and/or military as being fair. Sure you can find examples where a proper downdeclare can be had and I can find an equal number of examples where a proper down declare can't be had. We shouldn't look at a few select cases where the system has demonstrated good gameflow results and use it to describe every case as a success.

If we are really splitting hairs (which I love to do for the econ portion of this game) let me use my model of the game that I know is fully accurate for the first 1900 city I stumbled upon. I'm not entirely sure how you determined what an average city for each infra level earns but that is not what I am observing and I think it is due to your figures maybe not factoring city age properly? https://politicsandwar.com/city/id=20381 In its current form it makes Cash: 359.7 Resources: 243.1 Total: 602.8k/day At 100% infra cost (ignoring their cce and gov't bonus) and NOT adding any improvements 100 infra cost: 2.479m Difference: 24.275k Roi: 102.1 days So yes, closer to 3 months which is still quite some time but not 4-6 like you report. If we add in 2 farms though the new earnings is 44.875k (at these higher then average food prices and 2500 land). Roi = 55.3 days. If I take land to 1000 and food price to 90 the net difference between the 1900 and 2000 infra models (with the 2 farms) is 27.791k with an roi of 89.3 days This city is older though at 414 days compared to most cities I'm willing to wager. If we take it down to a zero day old city the roi (no cce, no govt bonus, 1000 land 2 additional farms) is 98.57days If we take the farms out (and instead did military improvements) roi = 133.48 (Yay we got to around the same figure!) So there are a number of ways to approach the problem of return on 1900 to 2000 infrastructure and I think it will come down to what is actually an 'average' build at these infra levels. That's actually a great question and I can put some good data together today on that since I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you right now, but I think in all fairness the way you are cutting it up with your 4month figure is pretty much worst case scenario for a city and I'm thinking it is due to city age increasing the economy . Good stuff though I always love it when more mathematical approaches are done. I do understand marginal vs average cost. And it would probably be more appropriate to define the start point for your marginal cost at 1500 infra since that seems to be roughly the narrative of this thread where infra doesn't make sense. Actually, I'll use one of your cities for simplicity since I like real world examples (only 1200 right now) https://politicsandwar.com/city/id=58170 I'm just going to post screenshots since this is very time consuming on mobile: Your current earnings: http://i.imgur.com/HxXM7wu.png (Look into a police station btw) Adding 800 infra without any econ improvements http://i.imgur.com/SABAta0.png You only have room for 3 more military improvements though, so I'll add in 6 oil wells, 3 iron mines, 3 farms, 1 subway, 3 drydocks Even with the big cost of drydocks added which are a non earner, here is your return http://i.imgur.com/NuNH9Ql.png If we take the three drydocks out and add 3 more farms http://i.imgur.com/2LTbV0N.png Note that this actually has a quicker roi then building a 5th city just like you did the referenced city. I know there are many other reasons to consider cities outside of roi but I felt this to be interesting. Again all of this is heavily dependent on resource market prices (which I used an average of the current market low sell and hi buy of each), but I think you may be doing yourself a disservice by looking at worst case scenario 1900 to 2000 infra return and using that as justification to stay at <1500 infra levels For a 1500 infra build I chose this city at random https://politicsandwar.com/city/id=46892 Building to 2000 infra with no cce, no gov bonus, 5 factories and 5 air force bases (no econ improvement added) http://i.imgur.com/HNluRJ2.png So the takeaway for me is yeah, when looking at worst case scenario there could be a 4.5 month return on investment when limited to your last 100 infra purchase with no econ improvements, but at the widely accepted 'optimal' levels of infrastructure in real world examples I can't approach that figure. It is quite difficult to get >3 month roi and requires no additional econ improvements being added. I'm excited to get those average infra builds though, I think that will be a fun study. I'll do top 10 or 15 alliances probably

At 100% cost 10 to 2000 infra costs 17.5m. Each 100 infra is worth about 20k not including resource earning. That is 400k a day. Roi = 43.75 days. Any decent resource fund and gov't bonus management will bring that figure closer to a month. I'm not arguing your other points but your half a year figure was quite overestimated

ah you are right i made an end of the day math mistake. i was looking at your improvements over your infra level and transposed that figure into an advantage on the higher infra builds. sorry mate

there are only 32 nations in the game that have 13 cities or more and less then 20528 total infra. 5 of them are arrgh so really only 27 nations that would fit this description.

i have said this before but perhaps a better mechanism to determine 'infra' score is to calculate it based off of improvements used compared to actual infra amounts. in a vacuum it probably isn't responsible from a mechanics side to have a system where a nation with a very large increase in used improvements compared to their counterparts presuming a 'fair' battle range is being sought after https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=8347 this nation is a good example and serves as the 'extreme' case in arrgh (since this discussion seems to revolve around them right now). arrgh as a whole averages 6.3 more improvements used per city compared to what their infra allows. the linked nation averages more than 26 more improvements than what their infra can support (a total of 365 over 14 cities). when you consider wars like this: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=102188 at the time of the declaration mang balong could only have 272 improvements. this is in pretty stark contrast to the 531 that mayor is able to support. to put this in perspective, someone would need 26550 total infra to have 531 improvements the 'legitimate' way. there are 162 nations in the game that have this amount of infrastructure. the smallest score of anyone in this 162 nations is 1685. They can only down declare by 25%. this means they can down declare to 1263.75 nation score which means there are a grand total of zero nations in the game that can currently fight mayor if they were to play the game (that im assuming) as designed where 100 infra = 2 improvement slots. i cant fault mayor though - this is incredibly smart of him and of course this isn't typical of arrgh or many other people in this game, but extreme cases typically serve to highlight a problem so it is worth noting. now some would argue you could just coordinate attackers to take down calondia. well first of all that would only serve his purposes better - it would only further lower his score range which broadens his target array. additionally from a logistics standpoint, the most 'powerful' score range that can currently attack calondia is 1464. the nations with the highest infra under 1464 have 22100, 22100, and 22000 respectively. this means at most they have 442 improvements when following a 'legit' build of 2 improvements per 100 infra. this is 89 improvements less than what mayor can support as well as they have fewer cities which is the real bottleneck for military support. furthermore there is a built in disadvantage in attacking since they would require low military score to be able to even declare. if they build up before declaring they get out of range. if they declare then do a 'double buy' they would still be very far behind a max military 14 city build. i get that there is the argument that they would be running a net revenue at this infra level, but the resource economy alone would be enough to keep this nation afloat by selling on the market or to alliance mates with all that said i dont have a problem with what arrgh does, but to say it isnt taking advantage of what is perhaps a less than ideals score range is a bit naive otherwise there wouldn't be an alliance wide observance of more improvements being utilized than what a city supports which is currently at 371 arrgh cities out of 584 total ; 153 of which have 10 or more improvements than what is supported by their infra (26% of all arrgh cities) infra has little effect in regards to military power in this game - it is mainly a function of improvements used. if the goal is to have a score range where an appropriate range of nations can both attack you and be attacked upon having infra as the driving factor of score would not be the way to go.

this as absolutely the truth.

What is the Max lsb you're willing to loan?

Wow this was really interesting and entertaining. Thank you for everyone that put time into this production this was one of the best things I've witnessed in this game to date

It was a good effort. I'm sad to see it not work out

While on mobile version changing between pages on a thread creates page not found for me. On desktop version (same session) it works just fine

Yeah you make a very good point on that

I'm saying a system could be had that spying nukes at the current effort barrier and losing 30 days of spies do not have to be tied together concepts...that a system could be developed where there isn't this tradeoff I have no issue with the rate of nukes being destroyed. It takes a little work as it probably should. You make a fair point on the spies being lost (and I'll have to redo that probability tomorrow) but the fact remains there is over a 50% chance that 4 consecutive attacks happen in a row undetected so this means more often then not it is erased as fast as you can click at day update. I think this should be addressed since only 2 of those is pretty much an auto win, so I think this is a problem. Aiming for a system that can accommodate both of these concerns in a valid way would add more to the game (I feel) then removing it or even leaving as is You are right though ...right now they are tied together (which is a problem). I'm not arguing with you on that at all I'm just wanting to work towards a better solution rather then keep a mathematically flawed system or just abandon it.

Look at my math again and you will see that 98% of the time the opening attack will render the defender without a leg to stand on. That isn't strategy that is an imbalance . I took part of that nuke thread you started about a month ago. You did not respond to my posts that addressed specific questions you had, namely 'why are there nukes' https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11153-get-rid-of-nukes/?p=208274 I might just be more of a fixer type personality then you but I feel there is more opportunity in the game to make these systems better (I actually wouldn't change missiles or nukes) rather then entirely take them out. To me it doesn't seem very constructive to point at something, say it doesn't work very well and therefore we should just remove the entire component. I'd rather ask why it isn't working well and fix that. What I see as not working well in the spy system is it is incredibly incredibly easy to have an opening attack roll the defender in a spy v spy situation, and there is little incentive to do anything other than spy nukes or missiles . We can preserve the incentive / ability to spy away nukes and missiles while fixing the other deficiencies. Or at least we can try These concepts do not need to be mutually exclusive as you indicated

We regularly see people lose several nukes a day from spies in war time. I think that is appropriate. It should be hard but not impossible nor automatic. I'm saying we should have a discussion how to keep the good things in the current spy system while fixing the poor foundation. Perhaps not have success rate tied to defending spies but rather the number of spies you attack with. Usually spies are out in the field right so this would make sense. Just a first thought off the top of my head I'm quite puzzled by your continued stance to remove less then perfect game elements rather then make them better, but you are entitled to your opinion