Wayne
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Posts posted by Wayne
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I got rekt'd
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inb4 mensa get rekt!
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Uh? It still says 8.
defo 7...
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For the eight of you who picked Mensa so far, shoot me a PM.
make that 7
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I shitpost on the MENSA leadership forums, so that means I have at least a half-working dick. Decent microphone; I put out podcasts in my spare time.
I could come on to briefly talk about the recent score changes and how I think they are misguided. Plus how the new military-policy feature (along with other recent ones) are a bit ridiculous in terms of balance. The cumulative effect of these changes should be absolutely bizarre in the coming wars.
Edit: I see you don't want to talk about score balance. Frankly, I think it would make for an interesting discussion. Also, I want to have a talk with Ogaden on my side, dude has some appreciable zen-levels.
Careful Syrup, otherwise you'll be accused of having butthurt over these new changes!
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Donno? It was hard?
It wasn't really 55 it was like 6.
There also seems to be some evidence that this was not about aargh at all but a sustained campaign of whine by members of some alliances who have had trouble winning wars to artificially weaken their opponents.
That does not surprise me...
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oh ffs Dan...
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Yes, me selling down to declare on the self proclaimed top three badasses in the game at the same time on my own. Sound logic. Keep riding the butthurt.
I don't think I ever made it into the top 3...
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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.
With the understanding that there will always be people who try the game, don't like it/decide it takes too much time and leave due to no fault of anyone in particular, retention issues can be caused by a number of things, some in Sheepy's control, some not. I'd say he's done an outstanding job so far addressing the things he can control. In the realm of things outside his control and in the area of player issues, raiding the same people over and over certainly doesn't help player retention and if you are seriously concerned about player retention and the health of the game, you wouldn't engage in the practice. The trade off is that there will be more people for everyone to raid, since the raid targets are less liable to rage quit. Something to think about.
When the test server was first annouced many months ago, I went and made 300m in cash and held 9 treasures. Please, don't assume that the test server is anything like the actual server we play on. The dynamics are totally different, not to mention people often get masses of resources and cash handed to them by Admin.
Those that 'try the game and don't like it' have zero bearing on me and my raids, as well as those 'super arrgh nations', to get in to our range, you'd need to be at least 3-4 months old. So once more, stop with the utter bullshit that our tactics of low score/strong military impacts on new players. It does not. It's the failing of the game from the off that causes the retention issues. It's the slow pace of the game, from starting an account to completing all you need to do in a day takes about 15 minutes, after the first day, it's 2 minutes. The game does not grab peoples attention.
It's not my responsibility to play the game for other peoples enjoyment. If they are not willing to seek the protection needed, then they deserve to be raided.
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I admire you for having the guts to sell down to save your members though, very few people did it.
He had no choice, he knew he was only days away from being smashed like the majority of his alliance. If you know you about to be punched in the face, you might as well strike the first blow and make a scrap out of it.
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Fairness is not my main concern with this update. Game balance and future conflicts, or lack thereof, is.
Balance and fairness imo go hand in hand. Each style needs a plus and a negative, which roughly should balance out. Giving one style all the plus points, leads to one style of play. Which effects balance and future conflicts.
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The score change is necessary as well, but this is the more pressing issue imo.
I don't think it is, I need only 16 slots to hold a near full military build, 20 slots to hold full, due to pop caps. This is 800-1000 infra, you wouldn't be gaming the system and you'd be playing as intended (each 50 infra is one slot). With this build I would still be a pain in the arse. Unless you are suggesting that infra has all the upsides with no downsides. Which from what I can see, that is what people want with this up date. To match a fighting account as well as having a decent economy, to me, is not fair.
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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.
I dunno, after the last war I was losing twice what I am now, when I got rid of commerce, civil and most of my manufacturing I saved myself about a million a day! Sheepy's mechanics are so full of holes, it won't take someone long to figure out how to game the new system. Let them cry for all the things they think will save them.
Extra commerce and civil maybe but resource slots especially manufacturing can be quite lucrative at low infra levels. Especially if you have the projects, but even if you don't, the 6 best manufacturing improvements per city can net a 13 city nations about $800-900k/day. About $1.3m if you have the projects for those two improvements. Not game-changing but it's a nice bonus to what you make off raids.
1.3m is what my daily upkeep is, so with all these extra slots, I'd be just breaking even. Thats without factoring in the extra costs, like restocking, rebuilding and rearming. It's not all sunshine, roses and resources at these levels.
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Better suggestion then the one Sheepy and Pre are trying to push. It seems that low infra and high improvement slots is what really has peoples knickers in a twist (as if it's some sort of major advantage), this tackles it without resorting to the extreme of losing one every 50 infra.
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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.
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.
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Well definitely with Mensa-Guardian vs VE, Guardian could not have done it without Mensa. But that's because Guardian is a small top tier (ish) alliance while Mensa is a larger mid-tier alliance. Since the two of us were fighting on pretty similar battlefronts at the same time, you could think of us as a single force. Initial losses when VE declared were pretty heavy on both sides, but then eventually things started to shift against VE. Mid-tier nations could shift from mostly doing defensive counters and hitting smaller nations to going on the offensive, and bigger nations that got nuke beiged could also safely come out and go offensive.
I guess my point is that the current mechanics allow for a back and forth in wars. You can go from a stalemate situation or even one force having a slight edge, to the other force gaining the upper hand. Or you can have one side taking heavy losses at first, and then switch to a stalemate or having a slight edge against the former winners.
As opposed to a situation where the side that initially has the upper hand continues to have the upper hand and hold onto it with ease.
I don't and have never seen what you describe, maybe because I was insulated from the worst of it by Mensa being !@#$ing beasts. My experience has been, I slap the shit out of you and you stay slapped till I either beige you where we wait out the beige counter and have someone slap you again or pass you along to someone else to carry on the slapping after the war timer is up. Every fight I've had the side that has the upper hand continues to hold on to it and hold on to it with ease.
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Technically, these "super nations" are exploiting the mechanics. The purpose of the current mechanics regarding improvements is so nations can fight back even after getting their armies and infra destroyed. The purpose is not so nations can stay in low infra forever and raid.
Is Sheepy's suggestion going to !@#$ the game up? I have no clue. I don't pay attention, and let smarter people figure it out. But something should be done about the situation because it can become a massive problem in the future. What if after the next war, an whole alliance that got stomped decides to implement this strategy? It becomes a nightmare. You might think it's okay because it forces people to coordinate, yada yada. But in reality, it forces an eventual cluster!@#$ in the middle tier. Suddenly, it becomes optimal for every alliance to have certain members sacrifice their nations in order to protect the alliance as a whole. You might think that's fine. I think it's dumb.
And if a 12 city player can fight a 8 city player, something is wrong.
As I've stated time and time again, having more slots then your infra can take is something that needs to be adressed. It's easily adressed by having 1 improvement destroyed upon losing 50 infra. That to me seems the most logical, The problem comes from the extra improvements destroyed nations can carry. Is there anything wrong with a nation having 800 infra with the correct amount of slots? He would still be an 'Arrgh' type account, but he would be playing the game as 'intended' would he not?
If the alliance finds success in the low infra tactic then I say good luck to them, they are playing a viable strategy and if it proves successful in the long term then other alliances may need to adjust their builds. There are no hard and fast rules of how best to play this game, that is one of it's appeals.
A 12 city player can only hit the 8 city player if he has a butt load of Infra boosting his score (as well as boosting his economy, that is the trade off), if the 8 city player is dumb enough to boost his overall score higher then his military power can handle, that is his fault.
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I'm not entirely sure that's true. Most of the game's biggest wars (VE war being the main exception) were pretty even sided. Usually the winners had an advantage in a key tier, but not in another.
Marionette War: UPN/DEIC could have potentially fought back at the lower tiers, especially since many of their nations had beige protection, but the war ended before that could happen.
Proxy War: Guardian could have recovered somewhat and started pushing back against VE alongside Mensa after getting destroyed by VE's upper tier. Similarly Rose probably could have controlled the lower tiers against t$ although admittedly I haven't paid too close attention to that front. However, the war ended before that could happen.
Octoberfest: TEst, SK and t$ got beaten down pretty bad and were starting to push back. UPN's lower tiers likely could've beaten their opponents and started to push back.
168 day war: UPN and Roz Wei would have had a good change to push back in the lower tiers if the war had lasted longer. The situation with Guardian, Mensa and VE was very similar to Proxy war, except that Guardian didn't get knocked down as bad and had better war chests for rebuilding. We went from a low of about 35% max military* to about 55% when the war ended and would have rebuilt most of our nations' military given a couple more days and pushed back against much of VE's upper tier (which we were already starting to do with Mensa - see SRD, Samwise, MoonPie, Gogo).
Plus of course Arrgh/PP.
*By that I mean the % of the max military score that comes from ground and air (i.e. not including ships, missiles and nukes which aren't that important).
The only alliance I have seen make a fight back from getting the shit kicked out of em was Arrgh and could it really be classed as a 'fightback', it was more an annoyance then something deadly. The rest you mentioned (apart from the Marionette War, I have no experience of that war), would have required someone else to ease the pressure. None of the alliances you mentioned could have mounted any kind of comeback with their own power. I was in Mensa for every single one of the wars you mentioned, we cruised through most of em, sniping down the bigger guys one by one, with very little to no threat. That's not to say that the tide could not have been turned against us, with a decent counter, Shit Creek was but a paddle away. But again, that would have invovled outside forces being brought in to ease pressure. I think I'm quite correct in stating that once you lose the first round, the second round is also lost, 99% of the time.
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Even one would be considered broken, because eventually someone will have to deal with them, and the only way to do so is wreck your nation, and end up in range buth with less improvements, or get someone to nuke you.
That is the most counterintuitive shit in the world.
Defending that, because it grants you an advantage, leads me to agree totally with Pre when he calls pirates cowards. I have nothing against raiders, by all means, raid all day, it keeps alliance internal politics going, but if have to deal with constant impossible BS, its just annoying.
Mensa nations have no need to wreck their accounts in order to 'deal' with us. The vast majority of them could build up and would be on par with us, some would even have larger armies! You consider it broken because you feel the need to have higher then 1300-1500 infra. It's broken because some people have a number in their head for the ideal city/infra count, it's broken because some people have built their acounts in such a way that they have seriously nerfed their military power in exchange for economic greed.
No one is defending the improvement bullshit, I think most are in favour of them being removed upon the loss of infra. Yes, having 44 improvement slots per city in an account of less then 1200 score is OP, but also very very rare. Some would maybe argue that it's to help beaten nations manage a fight back, but as we have seen time and time again, once you lose the first round, it's very rare that you can fight back effectivly in the second round.
Calling people 'butthurt' and 'cowards' for opposing this particular change is not helpful. Butthurt and cowardness have nothing to do with my opposing of it. I oppose it due to it being a shit idea. It's handing already rich players with high infra, yet another advantage. It will breed inactivity. Had this change been brought up a month or 2 ago, when I was still in Mensa, I would still be opposed to it. It's got sod all to do with Arrgh. They are not the only ones who use a variation of this low score/high military tactic. Coupled with the population caps on all Military Units, the best tactic now is to pad your cities full of infra seeing as it gives all the benefits without any downsides now, decom as soon as you can, move all your resources and cash to a 'safe' account and missile and nuke your enemies infra, then build up for the second round and curbstomp him due to the population caps.
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Sounds like fun -lets roll someone!
But yeah, I think after the next war there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth over it.
NPO are gonna get so wrecked...
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And I think that's the point of the build. You don't grow. I know that seems really weird and odd, but it's better for them not to grow. It allows these nations to monopolize a certain score range. The loot is more or less upkeep for their over inflated militaries.
Not tanks, and not aircraft, which makes it very powerful.
Please, you are not a raider, don't try to speak for us. We do grow, we just don't waste our money on Infra, we spend it on cities. The true measure of power and growth. Granted, we waste a lot of cash on restocking, rearming and rebuilding, but that is part and parcel of being active in the game.
We do have a cap on tanks and planes. Sheepy already tried to !@#$ us over once before. He's trying again and from what I see he likely to succeed, more due to the fact that Arrghs heart ain't in the fight anymore then anything else...
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'New' players are welcome in to 'Arrgh's Death Range', if they come well equipped, they will travel safely through our field of killing. If not they will learn the harsh lessons that the 'old' players who currently occupy the land have learnt. That being said, these Fresh Faced 800-1000+ score nations do not have to make the pilgrimage alone, many alliances out there can show them the safe path across.
Walk quickly and carry a big stick, is the saying I think...
Also what's the point of raiding, there's no way the amount of loot you gain in the low-tier nations makes it worth the stunted growth delay. I understand some may not want to play "build infrastructure sim" but doesn't remaining low to loot just completely stagnate your growth and other players?
There is no point to it. It's just something to do. I find the life of a pirate to be more fulfiling then not logging on for a week and then coming back to a few more millions in the bank, a few thousand more resoruces and then spending it on some infra and maybe a new city. Infra is not important, cities are the most important, they dictate your true power. It's a shame that Ischelle left the game, she was the perfect example of how raiding can aid your build, at less then 150 days old, she had caught up with me in city counts and was one of Mensa's strongest accounts.
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A Treatise on the Validity of Anti-Pirate Activities
in Alliance Affairs
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Bout 2 weeks too late bro... seriously, what is it with aliances in this game, it's no wonder only a few get any respect!