seabasstion

im usually gramatically correct except for those harder rules like not ending sentences with a preoposition for example that i cant be bothered to learn, but yes it appears i did capitalize my letters for the majority of announcements. one thing i personally dont like of my writing is i will use an excessive amount of parentheticals many of which are not needed. i'll usually rewrite them when i finish. i did it twice in this reply :/

ive never really thought about my lack of formal punctuation online. when i do more formal things like write reports or official emails for my employer i will make it look professional but anywhere else i usually just bang on the keys and hope something meaningful comes out. interestingly enough (and by enough i mean probabaly not in the least) when i write things out by hand i use ALL capital letters, but that is purely for legibility since i have the penmanship of a 4 year old. penchildship

at the risk of potentially sounding insulting (which isnt my intention i assure you) perhaps nukes just do not fit the model of the game that you are trying to create. political sim games like this you get what you put in. there are no right or wrong ways to play games like this. that doesnt mean there arent more effective ways than others. but a game like this is about creating an experience with all available information there were 286 (14%) nations that found it valuable of some sort to get an NRF. there haven't been any changes to to the NRF/nuke system for quite some time so i feel this is indicative that the game as a whole does find a reasonable value in nukes/nrfs at its current state at a reasonable rate. if the game as a whole truly did not find value in nukes then i think this number would be much lower. if nukes were unimaginably overpowered the rate would be much higher. should everyone have them? that isn't for me to decide but i think 15% of the game being NRF capable isn't by any means driving the game to a halt with unrealistic nuclear end game armories. i dont think having a required metric of 'revolving around the game' as the indication of nukes working or not is a good test to their value to the game. If anything, i quite like that some people find them beneficial while others do not. to me this creates questions. are the naysayers right - are nukes really useless? or are there certain situations where nukes create value and opportunity? do these nations know something we dont or have analyzed it a different way? in some definitions i would agree with you...nukes arent ideal. in fact they are quite poor. in other definitions i would disagree with you and i feel they have their place. i think this creates a more dynamic equation to the game. it is a variable that is not only polarizing but depending on who you talk to is over/under powered. i think removing them from the game to reduce the formula to soldiers tanks and planes could have the effect you describe to make the game more dull. sure there is a smaller debate about planes vs ships, but planes are widely regarded as the 'best' attacking military in the game. is it better for the game long term to reduce the formula into who has more planes? you yourself say nukes dont work yet people are rostering them. dissension of opinion on the subject i think is all the evidence it needs to satisfy the claim that they have their place. could it be changed? yes of course it could i am not saying this since i am one of the early adopters of the nuke heavy build that wishes to keep my investment relevant. at that time (which is still mostly true with relative small changes to the overall war mechanic) i found it advantageous to go nuke heavy and pitched the idea to several other people. so i guess what i am driving at is nations like me demonstrate that they have their place in this game. to directly answer your question why they are in the game? i can't speak for everyone but my thought was that an overnight 3 person blitz on a nation will leave them with very little recourse to 'fight back' unless there were a significant number of allies you had to provide a counter. at that time i did not have a significant number. i was in a small member count alliance that was paperless. i experienced an overnight bliz one evening from VE/tS i believe and i was done, even with a 5000 tank army which was good for #4 in the game at that time. i had no recourse other then sitting back on my mlp and firing 1 missile a day at my opponents that only hit every other day do to the iron dome. here i was with what i thought was a strong army. i was 10 cities with max conventional army and i woke up with literally zero soldiers, 9m of my 10m warchest stolen, and a daily buy limit that prevented me from approaching the strength of not even one of my opponents. "how nice it would be to have about 10 nukes right now and create some destruction" i thought to myself. so that is what i did. i saved the 70m in cash and resources to buy my NRF and the 6M for each of my nukes. so for the next war that came around i had an NRF with a 25 nuke army at the extremely expensive cost of 220M. when the battles finally took place i got crushed. i lost 16k of my infrastructure. but i took out 32k in the process which was good for number 1 in the game at that time look at my city creation dates and you will see that i went almost 6 months without buying my 11th city. it was a sacrifice i had to do to play this way. it was a different way from most other people but more importantly, for me, it was fun it was very cost prohibitive though but i felt it worth it then, and i still do now. do i want the game reduced to a 'who has more nukes' formula? no. likewise i do not want the game reduced to a 'who has more planes' formula. conventional warefare is very dependent on numbers. it isn't the ultimate factor but it goes a long way. for someone in a 20 person alliance and not treatied out the wazoo this provides an alternative way to bring some defense/firepower to the game. im not very social by nature, and i recognize i will not typically have a large reserve of allies to come to my aid. if i did not think nukes worked for my political landscape i would not use them. again, the fact that there are nations like me serves to the point there are, it just may not fit the picture you are painting for yourself in this game that may be more aggressive and political based. i would much rather have varying opinions on how to best play they game then having something that serves as a default weapon/mechanism, and i hope sheepy does now. that is why nukes should be in the game - it allowed me to play the game differently (and hopefully smarter - but only time will tell on that!)

whats the max you are willing to loan?

Strong move from probably the best alliance in the game. I like it pre

is it possible you meant to buy oil/coal for 1011 each and forgot to switch the resource in the dropdown. it kept the resource as buying food for 1011 each thus giving this nation quite a deal. the only recourse you have is to just ask for it back since it is an obvious mistake. at least it wasn't a multi-million mistake.

welcome to the fold (:

nevermind. you got it man

Trump 2016 is one of the best things to happen to this game. this thread is just plain silly

Will there be any perks like city walls or something that would give an offline nation some form of hardening in the works at some point? Aside from radio comms which will be a default selection, these all seem designed to give the attacking nation even more of an advantage

i very much like that idea. puts a premium on not being prepared but also allows for warchests to be more relevant. im 100% on board with both being implemented/tested

i've been thinking on this quite a bit i think this makes the war system more dynamic and interesting, but it still doesn't address [what i think is] the main flaw of the current system which is the buy purchase limit, and thus whomever has more members on their side will pretty much be guaranteed a victory unless their opposition is entirely uncoordinated. large warchests would still be relatively useless especially if 2 smaller nations can have an easier time of taking out a singular larger nation in your 2v1 example with the high loot rate. however if this % system means that singular battles will no longer deliver more damage than what you could buy in a day, this would go a LONG way into making the war system better ; but im guessing the damage formulas would still need fixed to allow this to happen. as you said as it stands now, if you are a large elite nation it would take a large amount of coordination and some luck for 2 or 3 opponents to get advantage over you and would have to take place at a certain time. with what you are proposing it seems like this advantage could be had much easier now at any given time of the day. we may just have a fundamental disagreement on this issue but as i've said before i dont think the war mechanic should be reduced to a 'who has more people on their side' as the ultimate deciding factor ; and this suggestion would only move the needle in that direction. i get that politics is literally in the name of the game and this update would make it much more interesting (and good for the game), i just feel this has a high potential to be bad for the game if other mechanics arent addressed along with this. on the flip side though - is now the once 'larger' nation is now the 'smaller' nation and would have a chance to fight back and gain victories (but still at the mercy of other people coming in to assist you). in short: i like the suggestion in that it fixes the 'once you start losing you can't come back' direction the current sytem is in ; but i feel it doesn't address the biggest issue of the game (which is of course only my opinion) and would still ultimately be reduced to an x > y therefore x wins popularity contest ; but goes a LONG way into making things better. i would support this change i think if paired with an offensive and defensive % for your units, this would be a tremendous fix. as it stands, i would call it a 'good' fix

can confirm

so if i give you $1,100 you will give me 1% ($12,000) after 12 turns? i'll buy all 100% at that rate.

well that changes everything. if there is one that can only spawn on pink, i have like a 12% chance if i were to move to that color

im a sucker for probability. assuming 4000 nations: 1/4000 is my chance at winning one drawing. 3999/4000 is my chance at losing. since there are 30 drawings, i would need to NOT win in the 1st draw AND the 2nd draw AND the 3rd etc im assuming that this draw is independent (nations can win more than 1), so this would be (3999/4000)^30 == 99.253% chance i lose each month

is there an option to forfeit treasures or do they have to be taken forcefully? i'm not looking to trade them or profit off them in any other way than what they were designed for - i just dont want them

Exactly. This is why I hope a gifting/forfeit option is available

i will be highly surprised if this actually increased war the way it is intended, which i am presuming is more alliance wide wars based on your comments. the problem with wars is that they are too expensive for developed alliances/nations, and the juice simply isn't worth the squeeze even in 'winning' wars. you still come out way behind. the cost of consumables and infrastructure that would be destroyed will far exceed the value gained from these treasures, especially if you have to hustle for them every month on mulitple war fronts. going into war for economic reasons falls apart once you get past early stages of this game you're trying to increase war activity by creating an incentive rather than decreasing a burden. it is my position that decreasing the war burden would serve your agenda much better if you truly want more global wars as it is the underlying cause of the issue you are addressing. all this will effectively do is create a relatively insignificant lottery each month and raising the profitable raiding strength range up a few points. things will only push further in the 'no war' category as the game progresses because of the exponential cost of infrastructure compared to the linear earnings of commerce. as nations become more advanced on average, this incentive will continue to erode with each infrastructure purchase. alliance wide wars will still happen, but they will be just as frequent as they are now and happen on their own accord. even if an alliance is spawned with 10 treasures it would still be foolish to try and get them as all encompassing war costs will easily exceed the benefit gained from this. however if this DOES work the way you intend and there is a big uptick in war activity, i hope there is the option to gift this to someone else because i wouldn't want it.

depending on what your definition of 'moon' as a unit of time is...does this mean you need three days before you can break this off or 90 days?

the 3000 character limit is a bit small for any type of detailed message (that i routinely hit). could we bump this up to 6k or 9k? all we end up doing is sending the message in part 1, part 2 which i dont think actually saves any space on your end i'm not saying i want to do any type of detailed 20 page reports through this system - but it would be nice to be able to have more than 6 paragraphs if i am explaining a situation requiring some backstory thanks!

this is an interesting idea although i have a hard time believing you will be able to fulfill your demands should a decent sized war breaks out based on your pricing. your cost is linear while damage payout is exponential. it will easily breakdown as nations become more advanced. you should either offer a tiered pricing based on infra level or incorporate a similar exponential function in your dues. i know i personally received about 160M worth of damage to my infra at 2000infra/city and dealt over 250M damage to my opponents over a 5 day period in the last war. if i were at 1500 score (which i was) i would need to pay in for 96 weeks (before taking in account your loyalty discount) for you to make money i know you will leverage this money in some fashion on your end (probably standard growth), but that is a big multiple to make up even considering only a 20% payout rate among your customers

thank you for joining our alliance (insert name here)! here is all of our top secrets!!!!

that is some sweeeeeet ronnie blackmail. mistakes are good teachers. if you dont learn from your mistakes you aren't a good student

We would like to thank The Syndicate for graciously providing their services to us. We hold them in very high esteem and could not have asked for a better big brother to watch over us while we establish our own footing Cheers