seabasstion

Spying against nukes I agree with you is fine but that really isn't the discussion at hand. I'm saying a defender should be able to have some recourse against offensive spy ops which is pretty much an auto win right now. That could be through reduced numbers being killed or the ability to buy more in a day. A goal of having the spy system not reduced to a function of who attacks first should be sought after. The fact that you all realize there is no other practical use for spies other then to spy away nukes is a testament to a systemic failure in the spy system and that we should rework it. I don't quite get why you think removing all the components of the game aside from the 4 military branches would be good for the game as a whole. Nukes and missiles are fine as is in my opinion. I just feel it very impractical to have a system that completely steamrolls a defender on the initial attack as the math suggests in the current system. It doesn't create a system to fight back, only a system to attack. Being able to kill a months worth of spies and/or render defense completely useless in the opening round of attacks is not conducive for a true battle type atmosphere. It's simply not a fair fight. Again I think fortune should favor the bold and the attacker should have some advantage but to say that 30 days of building destroyed in 2 minutes is balanced from the effect that nukes can now be spied out is a gross twist of logic and outside of what the discussion was trying to be. At the core of this discussion I don't think it is appropriate to have any type of 'auto win' opening attack or destroy 30 days worth of project enhanced anything (or at least render them useless) in 2 minutes by stock enemy anything in an opening attack. This in itself is such a poor foundation to build any additional spy functions upon and should have a discussion on being corrected. just because it does one thing right - being able to take out nukes to some degree of difficult which I actually think is healthy for the game since it would serve to be a dynamic component - should not serve as justification for a broken system that does many other things less then ideal. Please stop trying to shape my narrative that I'm trying to buff nukes. I think a solution should try to be worked towards a system that preserves the good things (like being able to actually destroy things of value with them) while removing the bad things (like the opening attack auto win), and I'm not sure why you assume the things you are assuming about me and potentially others. I hope you eventually realize that the game discussions I have are an effort to improve the game and not serve a hidden agenda. How I've built my nation is in response to the current rules and confines in place and if/when things change I will adapt to them...not try to adapt the game to me. An elementary school can tie their kids up in chains and force them to study or else they get a whip. Just because they score well on standardized tests (the observed effect in one regard) should not serve as the results oriented evidence that it is a good system as a whole. I realize this us a poor analogy but hopefully there is some takeaway from it.

I'm sorry I don't understand how this would work . Could you describe a situation and the actual series of events to occur? I don't think you are describing what a stock future really is so I'm getting hung up on that

i think it would be very problematic to implement without either making it ripe for abuse or just flat out not working. i love the concept though but forcing payment will be an issue just so i'm understanding what you're suggesting i will describe a situation: let's take today's food price as an example. the current sell price is 95 per unit and i produce exactly 0 food for my nation - i import all food. i could buy as much as i can at this price since it is low and create a stockpile, but i would rather not since i would rather use my capital to invest in infrastructure instead so that i can create a return on these funds and subsequently purchase the 2000 food a day my people need to survive. this is the gamble on my part - i could use my incoming funds to earn additional revenue for me (through infrastructure) at the expense of the risk of a war breaking out in this timeframe that would cause me to purchase food for a much more expensive 150 per unit. if war doesn't happen i win as i make more money than i could if i sink that capital in non earning food, or war does break out and i lose meaning i now have to purchase food at a higher price to keep my people fed and offset all the additional infrastructure earnings so being the wise investor i am i would like to hedge my bet that war is not coming in the next 90 days and purchase futures contract on 10000 food for 105 per unit. there could be another nation in the game that goes - we'll food is 93 now and i dont think war is coming in 90 days so i'll agree to sell at that price in 90 days to this nation ok great - we have a transaction 2 weeks later war breaks out and it involves both alliances. the buying nation is now blockaded with zero cash and the selling nation moved all farms into barracks and factories. so what happens from here? since we dont have real life bank accounts associated with our pnw nations how do we not only enforce the payment but also allow the transaction to happen since it would circumvent blockades? lets say the selling nation only has 2000 food, does the game take the balance of this nation to -8000 food and thus spawn artificial food in the game? if one were looking to cheat they could just create a multi nation, agree to buy 100,000 food for 100 each and let the multi nation idle the contract is executed and the new multi is taken to -100,000 food and given 10M dollars. this nation could then use this money to send out back to the original parent or obfuscate it deeper with additional future contracts where they agree to buy 10M worth of uranium at an high price for example if the solution to this is to not treat it like an actual future contract and have the money put into some type of escrow then...well it kind of defeats the purpose of having a futures contract doesn't it? i might as well just buy the food at the now cheaper price if it ties up my funds in doing so. so while i would personally LOVE to see this type of economic system in place, i feel it would be ripe with fraud and problematic implementation that could be used to circumvent blockades or just flat out cheat

i'm a little surprised by this stance of yours. not everything has to be all or nothing - there can be a slight incremental adjustment here that would allow for a reasonable amount of chance/comeback from the defending nation. i didn't give any guidelines/suggestions on what the change would be so i'm presuming you are against any change at all as you indicate any change would render the entire spy system useless? if we lower the spy success rate by 1% is it now pointless? this seems like a rather close minded approach when there havent been any specific details on the changes proposed and you are wholly against an idea even with limited facts available. i think that is quite a leap of faith on your part trying to tie this back to nuclear weaponry. if the mechanics of the game allowed for spy attacks to kill 30 days worth of plane building i would argue that is just as imbalanced. lol put the tin foil hat away...you can look at my entire post history i have never once said that nukes should be buffed. i realize there is a relational dance each component plays with each other but when you consider my next point: you make it seem like it is a triumph of man to kill spies away when it is actually very easy. the cia buffed spy attacking but did relatively little for spy defending. if spies are extremely more valuable on the attacking side i feel they should correspondingly be more efficient on the defending side too lets say it is a cia vs a cia nation: attack 1: 60 v 60 : 72% odds, cost 1.5M, kills 14 spies attack 2: 60 v 46: 78% odds, cost 1.5M, kills 16 spies this 'coordination' was from 1 person, cost 3M, and killed 15 days worth of spies and here is the kicker...if the defending nation tries to counter attack this aggressive nation: counter attack 1: 30 v 60: 61% odds, cost 780k kills 1 spy if sheepy's pnw tools espionage calculator is correct - that is right only ONE spy of theirs will be killed. but lets say the attacker did this at a day update and got 2 more attacks in: attack 3: 60 v 30: 93% odds, cost 1.5M, kills 12 spies attack 4: 60 v 18: 99% odds, cost 1.5M, kills 9 spies so for a grand total of 6M and 1 person they have eliminated 25 days worth of spy building from this defending nation. and will have a 51.7% success rate (that all 4 are successful). so more often then not 1 attacker will overwhelmingly destroy 1 defending nations spy beyond repair in a cia vs cia situation which can be done in a matter of 2 minutes. counter 1: 9 v 60: 53% odds, cost 233k, kills 1 spy again this is presuming the code in the espionage calculator is right, but is it reasonable that 9 v 60 will kill 1 and 30 v 60 will kill 1, but 50 v 60 will kill 9? this system is geared overwhelmingly to the initial attack. sure additional coordination must be done for non cia nations ============================================================================= now with all of this said - here is where my conclusion comes from that spies are overpowered (and i'm getting into some tricky probability calcs that i had to confirm with my phd level coworkers): once you get to around 30 v 60 it is game over. the espionage trial screen already shows that a 30 v 60 attack will result in 1 spy killed 61% of the time. this is essentially worthless if you have 4 chances to get 2 successful attacks, the first scenario being 72% successful and the second scenario being 78% successful, you have a ~2% of not succeeding in getting at least 2 successful attacks. obviously this means you have a ~98% of beating your opponent down to this 30 spy level that is essentially ineffective. tldr: 98% of the time a CIA vs CIA nation the aggressor will completely cripple the defending spies to an unusable level at a day update spy blitz. i get that the aggressor should be rewarded...but 98% is much too high of a built in advantage in my opinion edit: in case anyone wants to see my work

Some people may feel that being able to destroy 30 days of capped building with the CIA project in a 5 minute window may be slightly unbalanced. Even 50 spies (no CIA) against 60 has a 68% chance off success and will kill 9 spies when successful (which is most of the time) Then 50 v 51 is 71% and another 11 spies Then 50 v 40 is 77% and kills 14 New day happens 50 v 26 is 92% and kills 11 50 v 15 is 99% and kills 8 50 v 7 is 99% and kills 6 So in a matter of what can be literally 2 minutes a nation can lose every spy (save for 1) with relatively high probability even though they were armed as high as the game allows against opponents that are stock default I don't know where others stand but that seems high to me. In a 1 v 1 situation at turn update (using just the first two attacks) it would be 40 CIA trained spies against 50 default which has a 67% success rate . this means a group of lesser trained spies has a higher success rate to kill a group of higher better trained spies with 10 more if the attacks go chalk I realize it is only 1% and they are essentially even but if there was a perk in the game that supposedly 'buffed' aircrafts but demonstrated zero benefit in practice I bet there would be a larger outcry . I don't feel this spy system is bad at it's core but CIA is definitely lacking in practice I guess the ultimate question you have to ask is being able to destroy 29.5 days worth of Max allowable spies in 2 minutes a reasonable figure.

Obligatory huzzah!

i think it seems kind of silly that someone could have max spies and a cia and have 30 days worth of building destroyed at a turn update. i think a better solution would be to set the minimum number of spies a nations with a cia to have killed down to is 10 (meaning like 10 that are indestructible ) meaning if they have 11 and a spy kill espionage happens they will only be dropped to 10. this would at least prevent the free for all pandemonium that can happen in the current system when you can kill over a weeks worth of spies in one click. if you then try to counter with your own espionage spy kill the attack will fail miserably and you will kill another week's worth of builds on your end, so it prevents a 1v1 type fighting back even if you are attacking someone without a cia i know this isn't my game but spies just dont seem right. this is one of those things that falls into the aggressor being a default winner unless someone comes in to counter them. there is no possible way to defend oneself in the current system. i dont think having 500 spies or the ability to purchase 60 in a day is the answer, but i also dont think having 30 days worth of spy building (when you are built to the max the game will allow ) destroyed in one turn update is the answer either

yes as i redeemed them i was fine with the 50 per credit redemption (that is what i thought they were). i didn't even notice the discrepancy until after the purchase but i wasn't sure if your intent was to double the infra amount along with the doubling of the value and just didn't get around to updating any other sources.

i had a city i wanted to get 500 more infrastructure in so i decided to use credits earlier this morning (after this announcement). it took me 10 credits to get to 500 infrastructure. according to this update i should have only had to use 5 correct? simple division lets me know each credit should have been worth 100 and not the 50 they were actually redeemed for please look into this and advise on the situation thanks!

15% is no longer financially favorable to me (a lot of which is due to my high infra) Thank you anyway

500 of each won't go very far, but if you really feel it will be a huge combat advantage I would suggest you buy 10 (of the market for no real money if you want) and use it to equalize it. I know I don't speak for everyone but a 20m cash injection will do only a little in terms of winning a war for me. Things like alliance support will still be the big driver

im not arguing one way or another about the issue of raiding will be the collapse of PnW but here are some figures 01/26/2016: 1695 nations were 10080 minutes inactive (7 full days) out of 4054 (41.8% of the game) with an average age of 54.96 days 02/26/2016: 1823 nations were 10080 minutes inactive (7 full days) out of 4326 (42.1% of the game) with an average age of 55.85 days so even though there was 30 days increase between these timepoints the avg age only increased by less then a day with a slight increase in inactive rate. if we look at it from a different angle, here are the number of nations <30 days old that are either active in 7 days or inactive in 7 days 01/26/2016: 1339 total ; 724 inactive (54.0%) 02/26/2016: 1552 total ; 815 inactive (52.5%) its only 2 datapoints so the conclusion isn't that strong, but we actually saw a decrease in sub 30 day member inactivity rates but saw an increase in the overall game inactivity rate. it's hard to say if that is a blip or if there is a trend in there, but in the last month there was an observed increase 30+ day old members going inactive. i suppose people getting beat down in wars and rage quitting may be a likely source but unfortunately i dont have data dating back any longer :/ if there is a cause of raiders making players quit i can't say, but these inactivity rates were a little higher then i expected.

ooh baby this is getting good. i love data and i love mysteries. i'm getting hot over here i didn't think about that. one way you could do this indirectly is to check his uranium levels. uranium doesn't get stolen in war anymore right? even if it does it wouldn't be hard to total all of that if you have uranium levels what you could do is find a timepoint on the 22nd (before the apparent loss) and a timepoint after the apparent loss. for simplicity lets make the timeline: feb 22 noon: start point feb 24 noon: end point in this very simple timeline there are 2 full days between these timepoints. he has 30 uranium mines and an enrichment. that is 6 per mine = 360 uranium total at end point. there were no uranium trades for this nation at this time. so he should have 360 uranium produced by the end point. but we also need to subtract the uranium used for the nuclear power plants. this will be trickier to estimate since the damage for each cities probably varies around this time significantly, but let's say 2.7 uranium was used per city per day since the amount wont vary by a huge margin relative to the end figure. that equals 81 uranium that is used during this time = a 280 net uranium difference. if he decommissioned 3 nukes that would return 562 additional uranium. so what you would need to do (presuming you have all this data) 1) get the total uranium from start point [1000 uranium for simplicity] 2) calculate net uranium for this start point and end point [+11.66 per turn] 3) subtract any nuke builds let's assume 1 to be safe [-250] 4) subtract any uranium war loot [this is 0 correct?] so in this example: the end uranium level would be 1030. if he is showing 1200+ this is indicative of uranium coming in from an outside source (decom being the most likely source) if the end figure after 4 is a couple hundred less then what his inventory shows, that would indicate there was a decommission at some point. i'm sure in practice this will be a lot murkier to calculate , but 500 additional uranium should be somewhat easy to see by looking in a few spots

Yeah I would say something very odd is happening here based on these screens and phiney's comments . There is no way to go from 7 to 0 in a single day when you only launched 1

So if I take 9m out tomorrow I would owe 9.27m on March 3 correct? The minimum payment is 90k. All this compounded on subsequent Thursday's

heres my data taken 1230am game time each day 19th: 15 nukes, 3 launched 20th: 14 nukes, 3 launched 21st: 14 nukes, 3 launched 22nd: 9 nukes, 3 launched 23rd: 7 nukes, 4 launched 24th: 0 nukes, 5 launched so im guessing what happened is sometime 19th: 1 spy done (14 nukes, 1 spy ops) sometime 21st: 3 spy done (11 nukes, 4 spy ops 22nd 12a - 1230a: 2 spy done (9 nukes, 6 spy ops) sometime 22nd: 1 launched (8 nukes, 6 spy ops, 1 launched) sometime 22nd: 1 spy ops done (7 nukes, 7 spy ops, 1 launched) sometime 23rd: 3 spy ops (4 nukes, 10 spy ops, 1 launched) sometime 23rd: 1 launched (3 nukes, 10 spy ops, 2 launched) 24th 12a-1230a: 3 spy ops (0 nukes, 13 spy ops, 2 launched) it should be easy to tell from your end with the notifications, or sheepys end with his server data, but there would have to be 3 spy ops before 1230am on the 24th for this timeline to make sense. if those attacks dont exist then there was an additional vanishing. note that the 19th-22nd may be +/- 1 on some days but the time from 23rd to the 24th is much more telling since it is a hard figure that had to have happend. there is no other mathematical way to have 7 nukes on the 23rd at 1230am and 0 nukes on the 24th at 1230am without having 3 sabotaged on the 23rd, 24th, and with an additional nuke fired unless there was a glitch somewhere considering you were listed with zero on the 24th at 1230am game time. so yeah...look over your notifications and if you dont see any on the 24th before 1230am then you may have a problem

https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6248-thoughts-on-the-current-state-of-the-war-system/?p=105530 i find this post of mine still on point in this area.

If you're sending all your spies in a city that a nuclear blast happens (that they all presumably are working on) I would hope more then 1 spy would die. Otherwise we need a fridge perk to go along with this spy option to save them all

What is the Max you are willing to loan? I see you've updated your original post and are now dealing with more volume

You're thinking of it from the other side of the coin. I think the issue is i would like the option to 100% guarantee what I am saying is true to someone else. If an outside party claims something didn't happen and I have solid proof I do, I have no way to share this proof without the default skepticism of it being a screenshot fake

I think the ability to forward a notification to another user would be beneficial in certain situations. For example Nation a attacks nation b Nation a gets countered hard Nation a claims they were espionaged by nation b a few days prior Nation b claims this didn't happen Nation a produces a screenshot showing it did The problem with this though is screenshots can be faked very easily by inspect element changes. Aside from asking someone for a temporary password to go in an see for themselves there is not a sufficient way to prove this exists should one desire to. It would be very nice if there was a built in feature to forward server generated messages to other users. Obviously copy/paste is a joke and inspect element can be changed to anything and look just as official Alternatively an alliance notification system that reports the latest n number of spy and war notifications would serve this function as well, where min permission systems like the bank features could be used to access them I find myself in a situation now where the inner sleuth in me is dying for something like this, so I figured this probably has happened before and the ability for vindication would be quite nice

but they have the advantage of more or less being guaranteed damage. they provide an expensive parachute that can deliver a decent punch but is not the ideal weapon of choice in every situation. this is why they have their place in this game as is and doesn't require any significant change. if you want the luxury to always be able to destroy something, even when losing, you will need to buy on of the most expensive wonders and have a stockpile that can withstand daily spying. if you are to rely on planes and tanks as your sole source of damage and you find yourself on the losing end of a beatdown and they are all destroyed what happens then? If max damage triumphant victories delivered by planes is X and utter failure attacks are 0, then nukes are around 0.7X right? would you want to lead off with nukes in an aggressive war that you think you can win? no there are better options available. do you want to do utter failure attacks when you have nukes (beigeing mechanic aside), nukes are probably the better option. and as i said earlier the luxury to have this nuke safety is quite cost prohibitive for the majority of the game. i really dont get what all the hubbub about nukes are. i feel they are balanced rather well. sure it is unrealistic that only 2 improvements get destroyed in a nuclear blastwave but it is also unrealistic to have magically transporting armies to the frontline of a battlefield and then immediately have them back for defense a few minutes later so i'm ok with suspending belief a little bit as long as the desired effect is achieved and makes sense

perhaps instead of infrastructure being the determining factor for score it should be the number of improvements being used. in the current system a nation that is built with 23 improvements (and lets say 15 of them are military based) but enough infra for 6 obviously has an advantage so large that it takes away all sense of competition at that level of player. this is ok in the shortterm since it allows a once bigger built nation to have somewhat of a functioning economy (with additional resources coming in) but also the safety of not being perennially in range of overpowering foes. but an argument could be had that it is to the detriment of the game as a whole if they stay down at this level and basically just spawn kill (which we see to some extent). if you make score a function of improvements used, a beaten down nation that still has plans to fight can keep their improvements and fight with nations more equal in military strength. if a nation wants to take a breather and build up a bit more, they can decom some of their military improvements and hit a safer score i dont think a 1:1 infra to improvement score is wise (and i dont have a suggestion for what a good replacement would be at this time) but i think this process would be able to be self policed more. say a nation like me (that currently has 54 improvements per city) gets knocked down to 200 infra in each city. the econ i would get from resources alone is pretty decent and i could try to just swim in that line of income if i only keep my 19 basic mining and 12 advanced industry improvements (and a few barracks/factories for good measure). however if my score is based on improvements i would be worth lets call it 25 improvements per city, putting me back into range of people that could steal more of these resources im attempting to securely harvest. this puts me in a position where i got to do something, be it decom my other improvements or get back into the fold and build up some more military improvements to protect myself from people that can actually cause damage/steal a significant portion from me (this creates incentive right?) in this system, the desired outcome of people that want to fight are still in range with people that can be more of an equal match. people that want to hang real low and circumvent any real danger will have a harder time, and the truly new nations that have 800 total infra and 16 improvements across 2 cities can get their feet wet a little longer before getting into the deep end that or this suggestion could be complete crap. it was a bit off the top of my head

ive spoken with this member privately about this previously. im a little disappointed that this post has come after a request for build help by him (and an offer by me to gladly give advice), as well as an apology if he was offended by something taken the wrong way and not intended to be mean spirited. i will reiterate these sentiments. i apologize again if you became upset by something that was not intended to be mean spirited by any means, and if you still want some help/advice on your particular build i am more then happy to go over build scenarios with you since modelling data is one of my favorite parts of this game. i'm not sure what the intent of this post is, but hopefully we can move past whatever it is youre holding on to

Came to report a different problem with messaging. On mobile I cannot scroll to see who the message is from. Vdry difficult to continue a message thread