Dan77
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Posts posted by Dan77
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Yes I could play on. I would still be able to function and probably do quite well compared to most.
The truth is though that I was spending way too much time on this game even when it was mildly enjoyable. I've already explained in other threads in some detail how ridiculous these latest changes are, so I don't need to go over all of that again. When the game creator decides to punish good strategy and reward inactivity and infra hoarding whilst handing all power to the rich, it's clear that the game is heading in the wrong direction and won't hold my interest. I don't want to hang around investing my time and effort just to watch the game turn into (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) or disappear entirely.
Some of you will be glad to see me go, being the evil pirate that I am. Others already realise the effects that these latest changes will have and how they make the game less enjoyable, not just for pirates but the game in general and particularly make it unappealing for new players. The next major war will be an eyeopener for many people who have just blindly agreed with these changes.
Believe it or not, I do have some respect for Sheepy. It's clear that he has talent and has worked very hard on the game and it's really rather impressive, particularly given his age. He does have a tendency to make some bad decisions though and this is the worst of them all so far.
I've achieved everything I wanted to, so I've no regrets and I think it's a good time to leave.
I started in Mensa with friends and acquaintances from eRepublik. We quickly showed that we were highly organised and effective. I decided to leave after probably 6 months or so because I felt unable to play the game for the leadership. Being a part of Mensa was being a pawn for Pfeiffer. He may aswell have had most peoples log in details. They are still a very effective alliance with plenty of good people in it and are quite rightly feared by other alliances on the battlefield.
I moved to Arrgh shortly after Niemand and Perry moved from Mensa for the same reasons. Hypnotoad and Tywin Lannister followed and more recently, so did Wayne and Ryu. All good, active players. Once I got over the initial shock of the extensive no raid list, it was clear to see that it was the perfect alliance for me. Everyone was welcoming except for Buck whom I had managed to snag a bad Uranium trade from which gave me a profit of $16m - he didn't notice for 4 weeks
Ogaden and Jacob in particular were very open and approachable. I was quickly promoted to commodore for the military work that I took on and then later on to Admiral.I decided that with no coding ability whatsoever and no help forthcoming from anyone who could code, that I would find a way to create tools using the API. My secret weapon to enable me to do this was this script that I found and used in my gdocs. With this, you don't need to be able to code to use the API (you're welcome non coders)! I did make a couple of amendments to make it more usable, in particular there is a line of code to remove that stops the first record being omitted from API calls. I created alliance tracking sheets, military stats sheets and even a sheet where I could look at the full military stats of every player in any given alliance. I had leaderboards, offensive targetting sheets and defence sheets. All available on demand with right up to date infomation. I think it's fair to say that I made the management of Arrgh as an alliance much easier. I also created the badass leaderboards which was generally well received, although this was really awkward having to try to run so many API calls in this way.
I've not been afraid to disagree with people but neither have I been a shitposter. Currently my profile shows 457 likes from 337 posts.
I'm currently the top ranked Arrgh nation.
I'm 5th overall in game for soldier kills, 2nd for tanks destroyed, 2nd for aircraft destroyed, 3rd for ships sunk and 3rd for infra destroyed. I have plenty of other Arrgh members for company on those leaderboards.
It hasn't always been one way traffic though - I'm also 4th/2nd/3rd for soldiers/tanks/aircraft lost albeit with those figures being significantly lower than those on the offensive leaderboards. That's largely due to not being afraid to dive in to help out my alliance or just for fun when it would have been far more profitable to sit out.
My favourite time in the game was the long war that we had when Mensa, Guardian and SK hit us. They won the first round and far outnumbered us. Our fight back was unprecedented though, especially for an alliance of our size against such strong alliances. We changed strategy and took them out from the bottom up. By the time we agreed to "white peace" (they actually paid us $150m to stop hitting them) we had taken out over 40% of both Mensa and SK. Most of Guardian were out of our reach at the time. Even when Mensa sent guys down in score to hit us, we beat them off and passed them down the line to our lower score members for another round or 2. The war went on for a long time and we have remained in different wars for most of the time since then, winning them all except for the rather strange decision to take on TEst which wasn't the best idea our alliance has ever had and can't be claimed as a victory. We've had more action in the last few months than most will ever experience in this game, especially now.
Most people think we have had it easy and that raiding covers our negative income. It can do if you raid the right people but that's not what you do during wars. You take out the big threats and try not to beige them, or at least that was often my role (along with others) because it was the only way for the alliance to succeed in wars. That can be rather costly to say the least. So just how could I possibly afford to keep fighting multiple nations in a long drawn out war with a -$2m negative income. Secret weapon: Baseball! This terrible idea for a money sink was invaluable during war.
Yes it is a hell of a lot of clicking! When I really wanted to though, I could generate $3m a day from this to keep my cities powered and my war machine rolling. I invested before war and was ready to take full advantage during war. Niemand was the ultimate baseball player and showed us just how much profit you can make if you want to waste your life clicking buttons.
Sheepy has kinda set a precedent now. Anytime anyone gets beaten badly they will complain that the rules need changing. It's obviously easier to change the rules to suit pixel huggers than it is to make them play the game well but it leads to a boring game.
To those who were afraid to take on Arrgh or support their allies when we hit them, you showed great weakness. We really weren't as difficult to beat as you thought. We even told you how to beat us on numerous occasions. Instead you can now hoard infra, produce resources, make loads of money and still outfight anyone who dares attack. Sounds boring to me and it will lead to less war and more money in circulation.
To Arrgh! You guys are great. Thanks for the good times and I hope you continue to strike fear into pixel huggers whilst showing Sheepy the error of his ways. You'll have to do it without me though this time and of course you'll never be able to hit the untouchables.
To anyone who I beat or who beat me, no hard feelings. It was just a part of the fun.
I've never been a fan of these attention seeking quit threads and now I guess that's exactly what I have produced here. Anyway, I'm out. Hope you guys enjoy the future as much as I intend to away from the game!
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Ok, then how about this. I actually went out and rolled up a nation on the Test server, engaged in what I would consider a conservative raiding schedule (1 nation or so a day), and even with the changes that Sheepy listed in the OP, I'm making millions. So assuming that the changes do make it into the Production server (and I see no reason why not), I think you'll be ok.
Yeah, it must be really challenging raiding 1 nation a day who isn't even playing on the server. Clearly a good demonstration.
P sure that if you genuinely did think that the changes were good for raiders you'd be complaining about them rather than trying to bullshit people into believing what you're shovelling.
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Each project signifies that the nation has at least 5,000 infrastructure. While the projects themselves may not be particularly indicative of a player's war capacity, nation with high cities or infra are the ones with projects, and weighing projects more (which generally aren't destroyed when a nation gets beat down) keeps them out of the range of smaller nations that they shouldn't be fighting.
LOL. The extra 10 score from a project is unnecessary and just another minor issue put on top of some major, major issues. That extra score is only the same as 200 tanks or 20 planes with the new formula, so hardly game changing. I don't even really mind the change to the city scores. That probably makes sense if taken on it's own.
It's the combination of changes that is truly ridiculous. The phrase using a sledgehammer to crack a nut comes to mind. Rather than minor tweeks to balance the game, Sheepy has taken several major changes and decided to implement them all at once in some kind of hit and hope approach. The combination of the project score change, the city score change, the massively raised score from tanks and planes and the halving of infrastructure score makes Politics and War a dull game for those who want to grow and grow and still be able to keep everyone else beaten down. People can already counter the builds this is intended to hurt, so there is absolutely no reason to make the changes so overpowered. I believe it will ruin what little new player retention there is and it will lead to serious problems for the game, although there will probably be another knee jerk reaction from Sheepy to try to fix it down the line but I fear by then it will be too late. Making the rich richer and more dominant at the expense of the poor isn't a good game growing strategy (everyone starts off poor).
I've already explained it all with figures. If my ultra-military build can be totally beaten by infra huggers, I dread to think what can happen to the majority of players. Maybe Arrgh will find a build and a range to sit in where they can do even more widespread damage while even making a nett income but it's just not going to be an interesting enough game to play. It's not all about damage, it's meant to be fun. Even if Arrgh and other alliances can find a range to sit in, it's no good sitting there watching the ultra rich control the economy, the politics and the military whilst playing their own boring farming game. The game will be all about top tier. Control the top tier and you are untouchable, until it comes to the point where you're the only guys playing any more.
It should be difficult to beat a fully militarised nation. It should require some level of coordination or strategy rather than just being able to choose any one of 20 super infra nations in your alliance to beat anyone down who dares enter your range.
I'm not sure why I'm wasting my time writing in these threads though so I'll just stop there.
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tbh, having all those infra slots being used is costing you even more money per day. So it's not even desirable to hold onto them.
I think they are just about worth having but it's really no big deal. More interestingly, the people who I'm fighting value their improvement slots much more than I do. When I take out their infra and they start losing commerce, etc. it has much more effect on them than it does on me. The people arguing for improvement slots to be removed think they're being anti-pirate but they'd actually be doing more harm to our opponents than they are to us.
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People are placing way too much value on improvement slots as if they are some sort of strategic advantage. I wouldn't care in the slightest if I lost improvement slots with infra.
I need 16 improvement slots per city.
5 x Barracks
5 x Factories
5 x AFB
1 x Power Station
So as long as I have 800 infra I can support what I need. That's also around the number I require to support an almost maxed military due to population caps.
The extra improvement slots are unimportant to me. They have little effect and are simply left over from a previous build. It's a bonus to have them but by all means take them away when infra is lost as it seems only fair. It wouldn't stop raiders from raiding though.
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Am I correct in assuming that the new-player quiz is outdated, or am I mixing up two different concepts?
Yes, you are correct in assuming it's outdated. Good spot.
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The only issue with that would be people purchasing location changes to get (theoretically) infinite military buys, which wouldn't really be fair.
That's fairly easy to resolve though. Why not just set it so that you get no rebuy at all on the first daychange after a location change? A location change really is a longer term decision anyway and people would just time their moves when they are unlikely to need a rebuy.
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Far be it for me to disagree with every decision that's made
but as presumably with lots of people, GMT is a bad time for me. Obviously it's impossible to have a common reset time for everybody that will suit everyone or indeed stop people moaning about it.A suggestion that I previously made was that it was linked to in game location. Wouldn't it be cool if your reset time was based on your position on the map?! You might actually change where people put their nations and even sell a few credits in the process. Players could then choose their position on the map to suit their daily routine and it would add a whole new dynamic to war. It wouldn't be a mad rush for everyone to declare or rebuild or attack at exactly the same time. Alliances could even set up small teams who are operating in the same timezone to work together during their active times, increasing activity!
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This is less about your opinions, and about testing the features to make sure they're working properly, and if there are any balance tweaks that need to be made.
Look at my figures. It needs more than a tweak from what you're proposing.
The war policies, however, have a negligible effect. They don't drastically alter the outcome of a war and they don't change scores.
The important issue is the score ranges. You will kill off new players with these changes and your new player retention will be next to non existant.
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Yeah, just what we need. More changes to help rich players out.
I'm not really against this as a change on it's own but combined with all the other changes that are helping out bigger nations it just contributes further toward making the game unplayable for everyone else.
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Looks like a reroll is on the cards. Should be easy enough to spot this guy though under a new name.
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Thanks for replying to me sheepy. I know that I ask hard questions. . .
I know the feeling. I go to the trouble of breaking it down with easy to understand numbers and it just gets ignored.
There's little point testing when the decision has already been made. This score change will cause serious problems for the game. I can find better things to do with my time but it's a shame to see it happen. I'll thought out doesn't even come close to describing this one.
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Sure, you can up declare on them, but they cannot down declare upon you. So you can pick and choose who to hit one by one. Please. You and I both know better.
People can declare on us. I gave you figures to prove it. Ignoring them doesn't stop them being correct.
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Yeah, I've had a full military at times. I know what it costs and the slots it takes. And the cost of those slots.
So you're deliberately talking shit then.
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I think the main point Dan is missing is that while he can definitely be countered, he can also abuse the fact that he's relatively low scored, meaning he can raid people that are a lot weaker than him and get funded that way.
How exactly do you defeat Dan in the long run? Sure, you beat his millitary, except he can always keep fighting people who are weak & continue even after being beaten down. Especially if the person doesn't go for the minimum required amount of infrastructure but tries to run an ideal city. This is unfair towards both players since he not only cannot be beaten by the high end spectrum, but he also ruins it for the low-end.
Except I don't. Rarely is it in my interests to attack players with a lower score than myself. They just don't have the money and aren't a threat to us. It's often my job to take out the biggest threats in an opposing alliance. I make far more money updeclaring than I would raiding in the bottom of my range. I've also explained on numerous occasions that they can have a good amount of infrastructure and still attack me. They can even have more military than me and still attack me. I wish people would stop ignoring irrefutable facts.
Why do you guys think we don't attack Mensa? Could it be because their infra levels and builds are sensible rather than greedy?
I can most certainly be beaten and it isn't even difficult to do. I'd get fed up of replacing 16,000 tanks quite quickly (at ~$50m a time). I don't know how much you guys think we make from raiding while running a big negative income.
This isn't even about Arrgh though. It's about handing the game over to rich players and screwing everybody else. So many of you guys are supporting the change because it hurts Arrgh who are a current pain for you or you just don't like us. Think past the immediate situation and about the consequences of these changes and the fact that the richest nations in the game will be able to hit p much anybody they like and dominate the game forever. Think about how the game is for new players who's military is capped due to population while high infra guys can just take all their shit repeatedly.
Maybe I should ask Arrgh to all reroll and just build 1 maxed military city at 1000 infra and kill every single new player who joins just to make the point.
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Sheepy, you are in serious danger of destroying your game and therefore your livelihood. Let me explain why with maths (a universal truth) rather than the fallacies that are regularly passed off as fact by the opposing pixel hugging / high infra side of things. I expect most people will entirely ignore this as usual because it doesn't suit their argument and they can't deny the facts. Instead we have Sheepy and a bunch of people with vested interests in the CDG deciding things without doing the basic maths.
Let me use my nation as an example, as I am one of very few people who have the type of build that everyone is complaining about.
SITUATION WITH EXISTING SCORE FORMULA
As you can see, it is curently easy to have nations with a good income that can easily beat us.
SITUATION WITH PROPOSED SCORE FORMULA
As you can see here, it's incredibly easy to have your cake and eat it. The big, rich nations will dominate the game with ease and will always remain big and rich (unless they are incredibly stupid). Inflation will spiral out of control as infra hoarding is easy, profitable and doesn't have major downsides. Sheepy won't be able to sell many credits because even if he makes them worth $10m each, the smaller players can be held down forever by the larger players.
You think Arrgh are a problem? Wait until you set this easy mode for the larger players and bigger alliances.
This is another change that absolutely hurts newer players who can be declared on by people with vastly more resources. They will also join the game and quickly realise that they never have an opportunity to be a big player in the game while the rich get richer and the poor and new are downtrodden repeatedly. That will destroy new player retention.
Reconsider this Sheepy. This could ruin your game entirely and not just for Arrgh by any means. Maybe you should have more people on the CDG who are happy to disagree with you and produce detailed analysis based on maths rather than fallacies.
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only a !@#$ full time raider can afford 100% military.
That's absolute rubbish. It's so annoying when people make stuff up and pass it off as fact. Then I disprove it and yet they keep saying the same things.
I showed in another thread that you can have the same military and cities as me and an average of 1579 infra per city whilst still being able to attack me (never mind defending against me).
That's the kind of build I used to run at before Arrgh got smacked down and it generates around $2.5m net income per day plus decent resource production.
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what you're doing is forcing everyone to play your way (1 play style) versus the conventional way that the majority of the game plays (and the way it's intended to be played.)
That's not true. I proved in the other score thread that people could have a good economic build and still beat us. I even showed the maths and nobody has been able to disagree with my figures.
The attack and defend ranges see to that.
Also there are alliances that Arrgh avoid hitting because they are quite able to defend themselves.
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The change to the score formula just helps the rich high infra players. They'll get all the benefits of high infra with no downside.
I wonder how many of that type of player is advising Sheepy in the CDG.
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Don't need to test it to see how terrible these changes are. The change to the score formula is a joke. You're screwing us with the change to infra and the change to military units score.
Everything else is unnecessary but no real issue.
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DAILY REMINDER: Everyone can follow the same strategies in this game. Nothing prevents you from going high cities/low infra. If you feel the strategies of some players are strictly dominating other strategies, LEARN AND ADAPT.
Kemal. I think it's time for you to summon the Inci. Give these nice people something to really moan about. Arrgh will look like saints next to them.
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Then you can make them learn
Like we're making people learn that having lots of infra and no army is a bad idea.
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My score is 1489.23
It is made up from:
619.23 - military
300 - cities
40 - projects
530 - infrastructure
I have 800 infra in 11 cities and 900 in the other 2. It's low but not ultra low. I wouldn't be able to maintain a high enough army if it was lower due to the recent (stupid) changes. My build is clearly military focused.
With the way the current mechanics work, I can be declared upon by a nation with a score up to 1985.64
In the interests of comparing fairly and the current obsession people have with people attacking others with less cities let's assume someone has the same number of cities, the same number of projects and exactly the same military as me.
That leaves them 1026.41 score to use on infrastructure. They could therefore have 20528 infra and still attack me (an average of 1579 infra per city). That is a significant amount of infra per city. They would also have more improvements and a better income than me. All whilst maintaining an identical military. Hardly defenceless is it?!
If you need over 1500 infra, that's your choice but you're just being greedy really and why should you expect the existing game mechanics to change just to suit your greed. Keep a good standing military if you don't want to be raided.
The amount of money floating around in the game is bad for it. It widens the gap between between players and in all games like this when you join and have no hope of getting anywhere near the majority of the existing players it is hard to have any kind of new player retention. The obsession with high infra is based on greed and the fact that people have been able to get away with it for too long. Sheepy has said before that there is too much money in the game and that's largely thanks to people focusing on infra. Adapt.
Still waiting for someone to argue with these figures. It's easy to beat Arrgh and have a decent income at the same time. I don't know why we have to keep telling people how (it's really not in our interests).
If you choose to be at 2k infra + per city with the same number of cities as me then why should you expect to be able to attack me? That would clearly be unfair. People can hit me who can already have both an economic and military advantage over me at the same time. Is that really not enough?
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Game Over
in Farewells & Goodbyes
Posted
Implying Sheepy reads anything I post
He's too busy counting the advertising revenue from those bloody ads.
Also, I don't have to deal with any future changes. Enjoy!