Kadin

also Bender needs to say or do ridiculous things to everyone who joins the room. Bots can be a lot of fun if done right.

Not to mention that UPN gov could just remove his applicant status. No announcement necessary, really..

I didn't base my understanding of the OP's argument off the title. I based my understanding of his argument off his argument, which was "Rose has more ships per nation, nukes/missiles/treasures/in-game ads, therefore maybe they might be the more powerful alliance." Your story about a class you took has nothing to do with this blog post because the topic of this post was completely in line with the content of the post itself. He just presented a lousy argument, and you are trying to brush that aside with your stuff about headlines. Militarily speaking, we still can't say for sure which is more valuable. Again, there is more to the equation than what is provided here. Based on the information provided here, we can't even determine who would win a war. There is no mention of plane counts, and those are the most important unit. They appear to have a clear advantage in nukes and missiles, but there is no mention of Iron Domes or spies. In fact, treasures are deemed more important than both planes and spies based on the fact that they were mentioned but the other two units were not. If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of it, then it deserves to be mentioned that the author attempted to throw in-game ads into the mix to help explain why Rose is better. So ads are a factor but planes are not? This is just lazy analysis, and doesn't really even fit into the narrative that you're trying to push. To me it seems more like he had an argument he wanted to make (that Rose is more valuable,) and then cherry-picked information to try to make that point. He may or may not be right about Rose, but the argument he's put forward isn't good enough to prove it whether you approach it by using my argument (comparing activity and internal affairs) or if you use yours (pure military stats). That's basically all I'm saying.

Actually, the writer asked the question "Is Rose actually more valuable than VE?" That is the question that was asked. He then went on to use military stats exclusively to try to make his point. It doesn't work that way. You may try to change his argument or his question after the fact all you want, but don't expect me to let it go without pointing it out. He questioned which alliance was "more valuable." He wondered aloud whether or not Rose might be the "true might" in the game.. All based off what is essentially a screenshot of military statistics at a specific point in time. That doesn't work. There is much more to the equation than that. This is the point I'm making, and you trying to change the topic to something else entirely doesn't make your point for you. Thank you for illustrating my point about how useless it is to compare stats at any given point in time.

We're comparing alliances here. That was the point of this post from what I understand. In what universe is an alliance with members that log in every day and participate directly in the alliance affairs not a better alliance than one with members that log in every 2 or 3 days and who aren't registered on their forums? Just because an alliance has military numbers doesn't mean that alliance is equal to another alliance with similar numbers if that second alliance also has a more active and engaged community. Like I said, this sort of analysis completely misses the point, and much more information is needed before an accurate judgement can be made. What you are basically saying is that two alliances with 50 members will be equal in value even if one of those two alliances has a better community with more active players. That could not be further from the truth.

Numbers do lie. An alliance can have great numbers, but their members may not be reliable enough. They may log in once every 2 or 3 days, rendering them virtually useless in emergency situations. They may not be involved in the goings-on of the alliance. Some of them might not even have an account on their alliance's off-site forums. What happens if the alliance with the smaller numbers is more active and capable of increasing those numbers much faster than the alliance with the better numbers? That's not unheard of at all, and really goes to show how meaningless counting stats at any given time actually is. The idea that democracy sucks in these games is not just an opinion. It is an observation of reality based on years of playing games just like this, and first-hand experience watching the negative impact democratic elections as a method of selecting leadership tends to have on an alliance. It may not be set in stone in every single situation, but it doesn't have to be.

Numbers aren't everything, you know. I don't think this sort of discussion has any real value unless you are intimately familiar with how both alliances work internally. It's really only a baby step up from opinion polls on which is the "best alliance." The same idea applies to individual players. Everyone likes to think that their friends are the best in the game, but is it really the case that they are good at what they do just because you like them personally? This idea is pretty much why democracy sucks in these games. Here's the million dollar question. How do you measure the success of an alliance? Are they just blobs of nations with lots of military, or is there something more to it? At the end of the day I would say that this kind of analysis misses the point.

Go away.

Looks like he'll be UPN's problem now.

You guys won't be playing by new rules at all. It won't impact established nations in any way. The only people it will impact are those with less than four cities.

That's wonderful for people who are interested in that sort of thing, but we're not just talking about those people. We should want to get new players invested in the game early, and we should strive to increase the number of people who sign up and decide to stick around. If that means making changes to game mechanics to allow a broader range of people to enjoy it, then why not ? At the end of the day, alliances are what keep this game going.

Not every new player gets anything for free. If you join an alliance that is capable of funding you and willing to do so then there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to reap the benefits of that decision. Your assertion that this would disadvantage small alliances is nonsense, and your argument that alliances shouldn't be able to build their new nations up quickly offers no benefit to the game. In fact, it is the opposite. We should be offering incentives like these for people to build competent alliances, because that is how you keep people in the game. Obviously sending out money isn't an amazing accomplishment, but the idea that people shouldn't be able to help their small nations grow because someone might get their feelings hurt is not a good one for the game. By the way. Nobody has answered my question yet. How does it benefit the game to make small nations wait 10 days before they can buy a new city?

I'm a leader of a 7 man alliance, and we would have no problem whatsoever funding the first four cities for our new nations. I do not feel this change would disadvantage my alliance in any way. If your small alliance cannot offer funding for a new nation's cities then that is a problem with your small alliance, not a problem with the idea or the game. Work on fixing that first. ' For the record, I'm not saying remove the limit for ALL cities. I am saying remove it for the first FOUR cities.

Money isn't really the issue. The issue is that game mechanics restrict the rate at which a nation can grow. For example, I could send every new nation I recruit enough money to buy their second city and 1,000 infra in each. However, unless I want to have them buy ridiculous amounts of expensive infra in their two cities, I can't really do much more for them. On the other hand, if we removed the 10-day limit for small nations, I could supply them with all the money they need to purchase their first 4 cities or so right off the bat. As I said in my previous post, I understand why the 10-day limitation was originally put into place, but I think it deserves to be looked at again at this point in time. We have some very large nations that will always be much larger than the new nations even with this change. The only difference between the game now and the game with the 10-day limit removed for the first 4 cities is the speed at which those new nations grow. I have one question for those who are opposed to allowing new nations to grow quicker. How does it benefit the game to needlessly restrict the growth rate for new nations? Even if the first four cities could be purchased immediately, it won't be a threat to the overall dominance of the older nations. Not even close. What it would do is give newer nations a chance to close the gap a little bit. I see it as only a positive thing when new nations are able to grow fairly quickly and see their efforts or their decisions pay off as a result. It might even help with player retention.

I recommend just ignoring that guy, to be honest. He's not really even playing the game. He just tries to troll the forums instead.

#Kadin2015 Good luck with the merger.

I'm not him, and I don't necessarily think the gap is "unfair," but I do think that it should be addressed. In my opinion the goal shouldn't be to eliminate the gap, but rather to reduce it. Older nations will always be larger than younger ones, at least if you assume they are both relatively active and both continue to try to grow. To that end the goal should not be to punish the older ones, but instead it should be to allow the younger ones to grow more quickly. That's why I think revisiting and modifying the 10-day period between cities for smaller nations is an idea that should be discussed.

If we're talking about democracy in alliances, then I would say the issue is whether or not democracy actually results in better selections for leadership, rather than whether or not it is an efficient way of running an alliance. From my experience democracy does not result in better leadership selection in these games. In fact, often some of the worst leaders will come to power through democratic elections.

Honestly? I would say get rid of the 10-day cooldown period for cities. That will benefit small nations more than it would large ones, because small nation cities can be easily purchased by their alliance while large nation cities are more costly. Other than that another idea might be to get rid of the 10-day cooldown period, but only for nations below a certain size. Say the first 6 cities or something. The cooldown period was a good idea and made sense early on, but it might be worth considering taking a second look at it now.

This thread is basically spam.

Good luck with your new alliance.

I have to say that I will be very disappointed in you if you go and do this all over again after BoC was so forgiving toward you the last time. Even more so if you make a public spectacle of it again. I really thought we could trust the words you say, but I guess we'll see.

This is why we can't have nice things.

They joined BoC.