Azaghul

I vote for 100k per city to scale with nation size. or 100x infra level as a way to incentivize higher infra levels.

Can y'all quite cluttering this thread comparing the size of your e-dicks? Thanks. I support the score change. I'm less sure about the military change. A change could certainly be warranted, but I'm not a fan of it being a uniform number of days for each unit. I like the fact that there are different dynamics for buying and blitzing with different units.

And?

I also think a gradual increase would be better for recruitment and alliance aid dynamics. Right now alliances compete for members by offering them free cities. To avoid giving away too much that they might lose to a player that isn't very engaged, they end up testing new members. Established players tend to underestimate how easy it is to understand the game because we already understand it, and may set unreasonably high hurdles that make the game seem more difficult than it is. Spacing out new player growth and aid would help on that front because in-game activity would count for more and other hurdles would count for less. I imagine a lot of alliances already do this, but game mechanics forcing the issue would be helpful. I'm not talking about a long enough time to have any significant impact on the meta-game... A couple of weeks to city 10 at most. The point is to increase new player engagement with the game and the psychological reward of growth.

You could cap it if you really wanted to. Or make the formula something along the lines of City timer = (city bought -1) * 6 turns. Half a day per city, the timer wouldn't be 10 days until city 21. Illustrating the formula: NA 6 turns 12 turns / 1 day 18 turns / 1.5 day 24 turns / 2 days 30 turns / 2.5 day 36 turns / 3 days 42 turns / 3.5 day 48 turns / 4 days 54 turns / 4.5 day 60 turns / 5 days 66 turns / 5.5 day 72 turns / 6 days 78 turns / 6.5 day 84 turns / 7 days 90 turns / 7.5 day 96 turns / 8 days 102 turns / 8.5 day 108 turns / 9 days 114 turns / 9.5 day 120 turns / 10 days 126 turns / 10.5 days 132 turns / 11 days Cumulatively: 18 days to City 10. 85.5 days to City 20. My main point is I don't like anyone having the capability of buying more than 1 city a day, at least without using credits. That doesn't mean it needs to be a *long* wait. A day or two at first is fine. I'll emphasize that I'm not coming at this from a game balance issue (though I think it passes on that count) but from a game design and player retention perspective. 0 Days and 10 Days is too big of a dichotomy, there needs to be something in between.

I think 10 is too high already and actually think it hurts the player experience and new player retention. Getting a new city should feel like an accomplishment and something to strive for. When you buy a whole lot of cities all at once, it psychologically cheapens the value of each city as an accomplishment. A concept that might be more interesting and both allow small nations to grow quickly while not cheapening the psychological value of it: Make the city timer not a flat 10 days but proportional to the city that you get. City timer = 1 day * # city bought -1. City 2 you can get your first day, City 3 you have to wait 1 day after buying city 2, city 11 is 10 days, city 21 is 20 days, etc. Getting to city 10 would be 45 days. Not a long period of time, but by spreading it out, it makes it more interesting and psychologically fulfilling.

I'm not opposed to this. My preference is still some kind of high threshold before anything is lootable, to disincentive massive stockpiling.

A couple of balancing mechanics: - Lower bank loot amounts - Increase the threshold for money being unlootable on a nation. - Add projects/improvements that make a certain amount of money/resources in a nation and/or in that nation's alliance's bank unlootable.

I think you could find a way to balance it out... lower loot amounts while making it harder to prevent looting. My general thought is large stockpiles shouldn't be encouraged in the first place. Mainly because the need to stockpile resources slows the game down and sitting their doing nothing but stockpiling resources isn't very much fun. And while it's true that would hurt the losing side in wars, it'd also hurt the *winning* side. The point is to nerf stockpiling for *everyone*, so that the relative advantage that a winning alliance gets for being able to protect their bank is less because the winning side's stockpile is also limited by the caps.

I agree that offshores are gimmicky. Put stockpile caps based on city count for both alliances and nations. Something like: 3000 * (city count + 3) for each resource, 2.6 mill per nation for food (so folks can get advanced city planning, or adjust that cost somehow), 50 mill * (city count + 3) for cash (may need adjustment at upper levels for cities). For alliance bank: 1000 per city for each resource, 10,000 for food, city count * 20 mill for cash. Keep massive stockpiling from being possible in the first place... though there'd have to be some way to take into account current stockpiles. *is probably going to get yelled at in TKR's gov channel*

It's good to see BK back. It was sad to lose a major long term alliance quit over short term drama. Hopefully some other people/alliances will come back as well.

Items I agree with: All signatories agree that they will never participate in any activity intending to 'kill' the game. Killing the game is defined as any activity which tries to drive away players from this game, and also prevents new players from joining this game. This includes, but isn't limited to, permawar in an effort to drive members of the losing side out of the game and mass-spamming false reviews about the game. All signatories to this treaty agree that they will never cheat themselves, nor will they shelter cheaters. They further agree to fully cooperate with the game administration to investigate/prevent cheating. All signatories agree to pursue peace negotiations in good faith. They further agree that the peace terms will involve only the game in it's scope, and no term shall involve an irl activity (whether it be something serious like eating dog food or something more innocuous like writing essays). All signatories (if/when they are on the winning side) agree that they will reveal all the peace terms upfront to the alliances on the losing side. Items I don't agree with, because it's unrealistic, too-subjective, and/or not actually good for the game: All signatories agree not to attack the protectorates of hostile alliances, unless the said protectorate is aiding the said alliance's war effort. All signatories agree to not bully smaller players/alliances. All signatories agree to not develop grudges, and pursue friendly and respectful relations with alliances on the opposing side, after the war is over. Items I'd suggest: All signatories agree to contain wars to a reasonable length, generally no more than 1-2 months. All signatories, in the absence of any immediate and current provocation, to avoid wars against alliances that are just coming out of and rebuilding from another war.

I agree. Though it could be interesting to try to figure out... maybe make it something you can find out with gather intelligence? It makes it easier to blitz but it also makes it easier to counter-blitz. Right now if someone gets a blitz in on you before update and you aren't on, they effectively get an extra day of buying units before update on you, and then have an advantage buying units the next day. Your 2nd daily buy of units happens as the same time as their 3rd day of buying units. With this change, if they blitz you before their day change, and you have a different day change, you'll have an opportunity for a double buy before they do, and get your 2nd days buy before they get their 3rd day's buy.

Thank you for implementing this! This has been a much needed change and makes the game both fairer to people in different time zones and with different schedules as well. It also makes wars more dynamic and unpredictable.

Congrats on peace and good luck rebuilding! I hope to see more of you guys.

I Quit

I'd consider that stretching "trying to make it easier for players to play" past normal, reasonable limits. It's not uncommon or unreasonable for alliances to make an effort to make things easier for people who don't have the desire to be very active to be productive while still being relatively inactive. This took that to the extreme. The point I'm trying to make is that this didn't have to start as rule breaking to become rule breaking. There's a slippery slope.

I also don't believe that NPO deliberately went into this attempting to break the rules, but that it became a slippery slope that took a couple of steps to get to clear rule breaking. 1) Trying to recruit outside players from another community is a good thing, not a bad thing. 2) Trying to make it easy for the new players to play is a good thing, not a bad thing. 3) Trying to provide good OOC content to keep people engaged in the community is a good thing and something most alliances due to some degree with things like playing other games together, OOC discussion threads, etc. The problem was they stretched all three of those things well past normal, reasonable limits. I imagine it came about a few steps at a time. Part of that was also stretching what Alex said to an unreasonable limit. For most people who end up doing something bad and/or illegal, that's how they get there... small things add up. Behavior changes slowly not all at once. Using a personal example, in CN I definitely looked the other way to multi tech rings when I shouldn't have, and became more complicit in it over time from suspecting illegal activity to explicitly knowing about it. And I'd like to think I'm at least as honest as most people. Just saying this to make the case for some degree of empathy/sympathy... I think most of us would be more susceptible, in the wrong circumstances, to involving ourselves in something like this than we would care to admit. Looking at this as a series of small errors that added up to a big error, rather than just one single big error, is also a framework for NPO members to consider how they messed up.

It was wrong for Alex to say that it was "not a moderation issue". I get the idea he was trying to convey, that the best way to prevent it would be with mechanics changes. And an ambiguous, off the-cuff statement shouldn't take precedence over game rules that are clearly spelled out. It's important to consider the scale here. If this was a small scale operation, something proportional to an ambiguous, off the cuff statement, I can see being lenient. But when you're launching such an enormous operation, you need to be a lot more certain that you're following the rules. Also the extreme reactions of some people (OOC attacks and the like) in response to this shouldn't be held against anyone but the specific individuals committing those offenses. This probably also would not have been such a game changing event if numerous Col B members and alliances hadn't hastily decided to disband/delete in response. I have a feeling once people have cooled down they'll change their mind and realized they were acting in haste, and hopefully we'll see some of those alliances come back.

It's sad to see such a long standing alliance go, especially in this manner. I hope most of the members chose to stick around

It's unfortunate that people aren't waiting for emotions to cool down before making the decision to disband.

I was about to ask the same thing. ?️‍?

I respect this decision. I just hope you won't stay in if it ends up being a long term matter of people keeping up the fight out of spite.

This is sad on multiple levels. Sad that people would cheat and distort the game at this level. Sad that Alex is put in such an awkward position where he's bound to make a lot of people unhappy no matter what he does. Sad that we are likely to see a number of active players quit over this. I hope the suspended players will come after their temporary bans. Honestly I'd support allowing GPWC to survive as an alliance in order to encourage the actually members to keep playing. Hopefully they'll preserve their community at least. I'd encourage other Col A players to avoid celebrating this. This is understandably upsetting and shocking for a lot of people irregardless of whether the moderation actions were justified or not (I think they were.) This isn't a victory.

This. Speaking personally, as a 30 city whale on the other side of NPO, I've benefited quite a bit from baseball because it's allowed me to buy units while blockaded without having to cannibalize improvements or spend credits. It's a good balance to blockades. It's also been good for creating an inter-game community that crosses alliances and sides.