Magnanimus

Pirates option is not good overall. I was able to loot a way more than in normal case, while most of my raid targets had no means to strike back so was not able to test the -ve aspect of "Pirates" policy. When I was being raided by a larger nation, in 15 Ground attack Immense Triumph that they had against me, and improvement was destroyed only once. That is equivalent to around 7% chance of destroying an improvement. So overall I think Pirate option is heavily loaded on the +ve side. You might want to look into it.

The problem is that you are going the wrong lane of discussion here. It is not the economic viability of the nation building that we are discussing here. The point is that a nation with full military buildup is still only half build to a raider's military. The Raider should not be able to go to war with such a nation. There is no way this nation can defend itself even with full military build. All the arguments that pointed to "NATIONS WITH NO DEFENDING MILITARY DESERVED TO BE RAIDED" does not stand a point here. Now the counter will be that the nation build more infra then it should have to protect itself from getting raided. To this, I would like to say not everyone can live life at less than 1000 infra in each city. That is like every nation has to build in the same way as Raiders build so that they can protect themselves from being raided. This makes infra totally unwanted in the game and it has all the more reason to be removed from Nation score calculation. Why do you want something which is irrelevant in the game to be included in score calculation ? To this reasoning there will be a counter from pro-raiders that this is the penalty each nation has to pay as raiders have been dealing with -ve income on their nations while other nations were minting money. I would like to point to the Raiders here, that if you do not make money you can not grow and growing is a necessary thing involved in all games. If you are not able to grow in any game, what is the point of playing it.

On the contrary, I feel this will be better for smaller nations as now the production of resources will solely be done by Larger nations. They have free slots so they will produce and sell, prices will go down and it will become uneconomical for smaller nations to produce resources. The prices would become affordable for them to buy resources directly from market. Smaller nations will focus only on military and commerce and not on resource production. There will be a breakthrough with respect to infra/ land per city where resource production becomes profitable. This will be decided by the market.

I said this in another post but I would like to reiterate it here - Make War policies hidden and only view-able through a successful spy operation (of any kind). This will add to an uncertainty to the war mechanics and every nation or alliance going to war needs to go with a plan A, B and C. This will also help counter the first strike advantage in some of the cases. It will strengthen the requirement of spy ops and will in general amount to who can bluff whom better.

At last we agree on something

If keeping full military and lower infra in all cities is the only option in this game to be safe then I think this game needs to be folded up.

This is a ridiculous argument. I sacrificed all my other improvements to increase my military to 90 % max and you still think I am having a cake. It is the raiders who are whining about change in the game, coz they have found an easy way out to win in this game. If having such high military count is not able to bare any fruit to protect your nation, I think it is necessary to think about the game mechanics. This game is more about cities now, rather than infra or anything else.

Why Arrgh guys are complaining I understand coz they are milking this situation and they do not want it to change. If I keep 90% max military for my cities and still can not do anything to defend my nation and loose half of my resources just so that I was offline for few hours, I think this game needs to re-think about it. and something @Mayor - Nuking those guys will cost me more than what it would damage them. Stop behaving like politicians and accept what is the truth. I know you guys are enjoying this situation and I applaud you to find something in the system which has proved a success for you. But for the longevity of this game, it needs to change.

I have 12 cities and had the following military yesterday - Soldiers - 165,000 Tanks - 10,000 Planes - 972 3 guys with more than my military attacked me and reduced my forces to rubble. I think this needs to stop. They made me loose 7000 tanks == 7000 Steel == $ 14 mil in 2 rounds of attack What is the use of this game, If just being offline for 5-6 hours makes you loose half of your resource. Above this, I can not use missiles or nukes against them as they have less than 800 Infra in their cities. I think this game has become more about having cities rather than infra. Infra is of no use until and unless you are facing -ve income or facing a cap on your military.

Visibility allows for setting up easy counters. It will enhance the first strikers advantage of setting his policies as a counter measure for the defenders. If it is hidden, it will provide a much added strategic planning and will require attackers to have a plan B. It will reduce the first strike advantage and also visibility can be obtained by using spy ops first before declaring war. This will make spy ops all the more important during wars.

I see there are 3 problems with the game mechanics - 1) Score calculation too heavily dependent on infra 2) War declaration range of 25% down declare and 75% up declare 3) First strike advantage IMHO, point 2 is a good way for beaten down nations to have a chance during a long war. point 3 is a good mechanic for a war game. The Score calculation needs to be checked as it is too heavily dependent on infra at the moment. I do not have anything against pirates as such, but I think I have seen cases where 3 nations with 10+ cities and less infra raiding nations with 7-8 cities and having more improvements (thereby having a larger military force). In these cases the defender is at a huge disadvantage and the argument that allies can come to help does not work here. We need to find 3x3= 9 nations with equivalent strength (for similar military strength they have to have enough improvements and cities, that will not allow them to have a high amount of infra to be within the required down declare nation score range) to attack the 3 larger nations and apart from that, they need to hope that the raider's alliance members do not counter them. I suggest reducing the infra component in the score calculation and transferring the equivalent amount towards cities and military components. This should be done to keep a balance between infra, cities and military The math is for sheepy to do.

If the war policies are publicly visible, I suggest we should allow them to be changed every day or at least once every 2 days. If they can be changed every 5 days then it is better to make them invisible and can only be revealed through a successful spy attack (it does not matter what kind of spy attack it it).

Age should not be a criteria in a game like this. I think people happen to have more time to devout to the game when they are younger. As they grow, they get life and have to spend time somewhere else too

Congrats R&R and Iberia

We can add population requirement for improvements, for eg. every Oil well requires 10 people to operate every Oil Power plant requires 100 people to operate every Hospital requires 500 people to operate etc. Also, every military unit needs to be operated by people so you need to have population requirement for each military unit and its base, for eg. every Factory requires 100 people to operate + every Tank requires 5 Soldiers to operate every Air Base requires 100 people to operate + every Plane requires 5 Soldiers to operate The Nation's population requirement is a sum total of all the people required to operate all the improvements and military unit it owns. If your Nation population is below the requirement you can not buy additional military unit neither you can purchase more improvements so you need to increase infra to increase population. If during war your Nation population falls below the population requirement, you need to switch off certain improvements in able to buy some more military units.

Just for the sake of suggestions, is it possible to make the effect of nuke to change from Beige to the Government Type going to Anarchy. We can keep a new government type of Anarchy which is selected only during a nuke damage and can be removed only after 5 days. Anarchy reduces the citizen income and increases crime and disease.

I would also love some Asian Military units (from China, India, etc) just to make the choice more diverse.

why not limit the acceptance of military units as aid from other nations to once every 2 days? This will not only provide assistance to heavily loosing sides, but also involve some kind of strategy from Alliances aiding there weaker nations.

If at all we need to up the damage from nukes, then we need to spread the damage to surrounding cities rather than keep the damage limited to a particular city. I would suggest to keep the damage from nukes the same only redistribute it to surrounding cities as - Let us say City that is nuked is City #5, then the damage done by nukes is spread as - City #5 - 60% Infra damage & pollution effect City #4 and City #6 - 15% Infra damage & pollution effect City #3 and City #7 - 5% Infra damage & pollution effect The nuke damage remains the same but is spread to cities thereby increasing its worth.

This could be interesting with some members who are not willing to join the fight can at least help by sending military units. I would suggest they should not be able to send Missiles, Nukes and Spies. Plus, the nation who receives can store more than its total capacity but then can not use its daily limit for rebuild until the military unit goes below its max capacity. This will help Alliances to come to aid of weaker nations when they are ganged up by stronger nations and make wars last longer and not to be on sided.

Ok got it

I think Improvement destruction should only be limited to Nukes, Navy attack and Air-strikes that are not dog-fights. Rest all should not touch improvements but the destruction to soldiers and tanks can be beefed up.

That anyways was happening. Its the alliance members accepting the trade offers that I have set on the global market which was creating a problem. I will keep a check on it and let you know if it happens again.

I trust you on that, but will only come to know whether it is fixed or not if it happens again in the future

Nobody goes to vacation every month. We can restrict vacation mode to once every 3 months or so.