Sir Scarfalot

If you were only involved in one war this year, then that's already pretty goddamn bad and you should be ashamed.

Welcome~! Personally, I always check Game Discussion, Orbis Central, and Alliance Affairs, those are where most ingame stuff is. But I might be wrong >_>

With the way these types of games work, the winners must never be allowed to snowball, and that's why fortification is absolutely indispensable and must not be changed in any direction. It must be the defender that has the options. You can keep saying that 'winning nations should have the ability to win', but that is very wrong. What really is necessary is that lesser nations should have the option to deny profit but take more damage, or allow profit but take less damage. That way, lesser nations can engage in guerrilla attrition warfare, while larger nations and larger alliances/blocs have actual risks to be concerned about. Under your plan, lesser nations can be beaten down ad infinitum, and larger alliances/nations/blocs have no risks against them at all if they consolidate hard enough. If anything I'm understating it; small alliances lose disproportionately more to beige than large alliances, which further exacerbates the problems that we're facing right now. Besides, 2500 infra isn't protected by fortification, as I've already stated over a dozen times. More importantly, I'm saying that the defender should have the option to wholly prevent profit to their attackers, as long as it is costly enough (which it is). If you are going to lose most of the money and infra from fighting and not from beige, which is true, then fortification spamming isn't overpowered or broken as you say. It just results in more losses, should a whale attempt the tactic. Therefore whales aren't benefitted by the mechanic, and this encourages more wars at the upper tiers. It also discourages wars against the lower tiers and against the weaker and poorer players, such as newbies and war victims and smaller alliances, which is healthy for the game and allows dynamism. Remember that the vast majority of wars in game are against newbies/low military/small alliances; and that's not healthy since it makes it harder for those players to rise to the top, while it makes it too easy for the top players to maintain their position. Give the non-whales a chance, and make the whales fight for their dominant position at long last. Well, we could redefine 'victory' for the purposes of treasure transfers or national statistics and approval rating to be 'have more resistance than your opponent at the end of war' rather than 'beige opponent'. As long as this doesn't affect looting other than treasure, I'd say it would be a good and healthy change. However, remember that beige is specifically a surrender by the losing side; nations historically have been willing to accept tremendous infrastructure losses and bury their resources in secret stashes or just burn their own cities to the ground than surrender, and that option should be available ingame as well. Currently it exists through fortification, and it is perfectly balanced. Every 3 nations have enough offensive slots to fully attack 5 nations. If those 5 nations are defeated by the 3, then why shouldn't the game mechanics reflect the 3 nations being over extended? Besides, they're self-evidently NOT the weaker side if they're able to force their opponents to fortification.

Pfffffffffbt why would you imagine that you deserve a 1v2? Just because you've got less friends doesn't mean that you should be given a handicap.

The losing nation should absolutely have the ability to avoid allowing their opponents profit. It should not be without consequence, but it should always be available. And it is absolutely necessary, because without it, it is possible to effectively and without any kind of attrition permafarm and PZI opponents and that maladaptive behavior becomes the only rational option available. That's how these games die. With fortification as it stands right now, losing nations DO lose. They lose the ability to do damage to other nations. They lose the ability to have more than 100k in their available cash pile. They lose the ability to make real money. Raiders may not see a profit off of attacking them, but, and I cannot stress this enough, THIS IS NOT A BAD THING AT ALL! Dominant nations should NOT have the unilateral ability to win, with the underdog nation having no option to avoid it. They should absolutely, positively never have that ability. It is a very bad thing, and inevitably, invariably results in cybernations levels of dead and shit game. To reiterate, losing nations should have the ability to avoid beige. How many times do I need to even say it? I'll say it again: all nations, regardless of resources available to them, should be able to avoid beige through dedicated action. Moneybags nothing; it's not a question of alleviating losses. Losses are actually something that should happen. Profit, on the other hand, should be something that losing nations can prevent raiders from attaining. I really need to get this through to you: raiders should not be able to force a profit. Raiders should be able to cause damage, but as of right now, fortification is exactly where it needs to be. And how many times? It is not impossible to lose a war. Fortification still results in dead military and dead infrastructure and dead income. These are things that players need to avoid in order to be relevant in world politics. What should be impossible is for nations to have no option to resist prolonged warfare, but only be able to reroll, be farmed, consolidate, or quit. Nations being unable to raid banks makes the problem that you're concerned about far, far worse, even if fortification were to be removed entirely. Your suggestions would eliminate the factors that make fortification the perfect balancing mechanic that it is, and would absolutely result in further consolidation and player exodus and shit gameplay. Fortification must absolutely not be changed in any direction, under any circumstances. A player can fortify past 100 resistance, sure; what's your point? All forms of conventional battles remove resistance faster than fortification gains it, so it's a temporary situation at best, unless the attacker is relatively inactive. Yes, it is impossible to beige someone that chooses to accept the fortification option, and it should be! Remember that opportunistic raids and permafarming by necessity happen to the least powerful and least wealthy players, including new players, players with fewer allies, and players that have had their militaries destroyed in prior warfare. These are the players that stand to benefit from fortifying, and they need that option, because the alternative is to consolidate, be farmed, reroll (and stay in the exact same situation), or quit. This inevitably leads to the latter, which makes the game worse for everyone. Fortification does nothing to help whales, and it shouldn't. What fortification is is a mechanic that truly allows underdog players to compete, while encouraging everyone to take risks in attacking the top players. And this is what needs to be the case. If fortification is changed, in any way, then we will never see dynamism, only consolidation and ultimately pixelhuggers complaining about lack of warfare like we do already. Your opponents should be able to make war difficult for you. It should absolutely not be easy. Just because it is inconvenient for you doesn't mean that it's a bad thing to have in the game. Clogging up your offensive slots is a solid and important strategic consideration, especially since in order for that scenario to exist, your enemy alliance needs to outnumber your alliance 5 to 3. War isn't easy, it should not be easy, and it sure as hell shouldn't be convenient. As for it being for your own good, it absolutely is. A well-balanced and active game is fun and dynamic and interesting; what you'd get if you got what you're asking for is either you killing everyone until and beyond the point that it becomes joyless work, or you getting stomped forever with no way out of the situation other than quitting or else joining the joyless workers forever, or at least until you quit anyway. This fate is worse for you, unless you happen to be a masochist work fetishist. If you are, well, then you do your thing man. Nations should absolutely be able to prevent their opponents from getting profit. Now, treasure, sure. That's a solid point and something that should be lootable by winning nations. As durmij said though, all it needs is for treasures to be claimed by the nation with the highest resistance at the end of any given war; then it'd be dynamic and all that. I fully support that idea.

everyone always is eager to get to that stage, as long as they're the hegemons of course

That's the way it should be. What matters is the fact that it will get stuck on the hegemoney side, and then die completely, unless players make the effort to keep going. And effort is hard, if not entirely impossible should the game mechanics not allow the option to resist the hegemoney or split the hegemoney into the smaller spheres that you describe.

Fortifying does change certain aspects of the game, perhaps even in ways that sheepy didn't originally think of, but rather than breaking them it makes them much better for everyone. What you're arguing for is for the ability of dominant nations to constantly and profitably farm everyone else ad infinitum, with the defender having literally no options whatsoever for resisting. I've seen that behavior break every game in which it can be performed, and it will break this one if we let it. There is no way around that, short of all players choosing to give up on their dominance regularly and without being crushed ad infinitum themselves. Which would be absurd; people aren't wise enough or smart enough to do that. No, again, no. 100/100 taxes plus sending loot to Yarr, keeping only a modicum of munitions/aluminum/steel/gas, calculated based on how much possible military can be produced by the end of the war. I don't know the specifics nor the formulas that Arrgh uses, but to the best of my understanding they are really good at rationing that for maximum effectiveness and minimum risk. Then if you attack them you loot almost nothing even if you beige your opponent, while they do intense damage to you, or whoever they attack, at essentially no risk. Fortification simply allows another way to achieve this result, and both methods are fair and worth maintaining as viable strategies. Besides, even if the defender gets beiged under the Arrgh approach, they certainly won't yield a profit to their attacker. The reasoning behind eliminating fortification also applies to the concept of bank alliances, but it would be unfair to everyone to restrict that kind of mechanic just because Arrgh uses it the way they do. Fortification however is fairer to everyone and evens the playing field in a positive way. What really matters to my experience is the cost of sealclubbing; if raiders can expect a profit from curbstomping small alliances and individuals, then they will be both more motivated and able to engage in that game-killing behavior. That behavior must be discouraged, and fortification is, whether designed by sheepy for this purpose or not, an incredibly fair and effective measure against dedgame. It's not fun per se, it is however a way to farm resources with which to build or wage active wars. There's nothing wrong with that. And there's furthermore nothing wrong with them coming back online and fighting back; I certainly hope you're not accusing me of being afraid of warfare. It can prevent nations from losing their resources, and more importantly it should be able to, since this is a good thing. Nations should not be able to avoid damage or war, but they should have options to resist and persist as competitive entities, and indeed should have the option to deny loot to their opponents. Player behaviors and unstable equilibrium are both insurmountable factors that will result in deadgame otherwise. As for alliance wars, your opponents should have the option to clog up your slots with heavy resistance. This is a good thing, even for you. You should not be able to get an easy or guaranteed profit, not even on an alliance vs alliance scale. Wars should not be decided within the first blitz and then permafarm until surrender or deletion, even if that's inconvenient for you personally. This game isn't easy and it absolutely never should be, otherwise the winners have to constantly beat down their opponents and it becomes a chore, while the losers have to lie back and take it since they have no options to escape. I would dispute that; you're fighting against HUMAN players, and therefore mistakes are inevitable. Between network connectivity problems and family/medical emergencies and stuff, there's going to be opportunities for beige. Now, that's certainly not fair to have someone take ingame punishments for perfectly reasonable out of game emergencies, but it is still something that should be acknowledged as a possibility. But even if they are active and are able to use every action, it takes math to actually determine when you're safe to launch a battle and when you need to fortify or get naval attacked to beige. People don't always math properly, even I've made a couple mistakes and risked beige a few times. (Both times my opponents failed to see the opportunity and missed it through attacking with the wrong battle type) What I'm against is the idea that players should not have the option to preserve their national bank. ...That's a horrible sentence, I apologize for the double negative. Lemme rephrase: I believe that players should have the option to preserve their national and alliance banks through fortification. However, players should need to face consequences in order to do this; consequences which the current mechanics of fortification allow for, and any changes would threaten. Players need to be active, players need to be willing to lose their ability to project conventional military power, and players need to be willing to lose their infrastructure and improvements, and all of these are very valid and debilitating consequences to the fortification dodge. If there are other, better ways than fortification to make small nation gameplay viable, I don't know what they are nor could possibly be; could you elaborate? It's not about fairness, it's about keeping the game playable at all. It's not like I'm arguing that a rogue solo nation should be the only way to hit the top leaderboards, here. I'm trying to argue that there should be the potential for those smaller nations and alliances to be able to wage guerrilla attrition wars against larger blob alliances. Without fortification, any attempt at guerrilla attrition wars would simply profit the larger blobs and thus only consolidation could even happen. Fortifying is useful for protecting what resources those small nations and alliances even have in their banks at all, and more importantly it is useful for the option to prevent opponents from gaining profit off of opportunistic or spiteful sealclubbing. Whale hunting still is profitable, fortification or not, and (here comes the bold word again) should be. Spiteful sealclubbing to PZI nations or loot newbies and war victims should not be a guaranteed profit, and both whale hunting and seal clubbing should be risky for the attacker. Even if that risk is the risk of the defender fortifying to prolong the war and deny loot. As for making a deal with another alliance to hold onto resources, that can work, but it is more complex and has the possibility of sabotage, and also can be all too easily countered through blockade. The point that I'm trying to make is that fortification works to enable and empower underdog nations in a fair and balanced manner, and should absolutely not be changed at all. Before you accuse me of bias or something, I want to clarify that I fully supported the change to fortification that made it cost 4 actions instead of 3. 3 action fortification was overpowered and allowed players to play almost as aggressively as they wanted to without worry, while 4 action fortification is in the exact sweet spot of allowing nations to avoid beige while not allowing nations that fortify to avoid beige to still play aggressively. tl;dr: Raids should never be easy or guaranteed. Defenders should have a costly, but always available, option to deny loot to their attackers. Whale hunting needs to make a comeback, and fortification allows and encourages it, if people were willing to get gud and just do it™. Fortification needs to not be changed, or Politics and War risks becoming cybernations 2.0. I've played these games for years, and Politics and War on a prior account a couple years ago, so I'm very confident in my conclusions. Edit: The posts keep getting longer... O_o

Grump. I lost the casualties award. That's the real loss Edit: Wait no what's wrong with you that nation doesn't exist! props for gathering 7 all at once at least, but I'm keeping mine. http://test.politicsandwar.com/nation/id=484

I would argue that your concerns about treasure looting are more tied to treasures themselves rather than wars; besides, treasures only provide cash, which can be looted or spent on infrastructure which can be destroyed. It's already a viable strategy to put all your alliances' steel into a bank alliance's bank. Players do fully avoid being looted, that's what Arrgh has done for years. Fortification simply expands that option to allow a simpler, and weaker, option to be available to everyone. And that's a very important step towards a more dynamic and enjoyable game for all. Alliances that aren't mobilized should be anyway. Players that sit on their asses disgust me. "Rogue" nations that don't want to join a big alliance should have that option and it should be encouraged, not avoided. They cause mobilization and drama and fun, something that the large alliances are loathe to even consider. And you're contradicting yourself about it not doing anything for smaller nations; rather it allows the smaller nations to avoid being profitably farmed and instead allows them to resist their enemies effectively and consistently, while suffering an appropriate cost for their actions. The contradiction is that smaller nations have the option to become 'rogue' nations, as you put it, whereas they never had that option before. This empowers them, and allows them to fight back against the dogpile. Sure, it doesn't stop the dogpile from happening, but it's better to allow that to happen AND be able to resist it than to prevent warfare from happening at all. People can be defeated in war, if they can be baited to play too aggressively and be trapped. It's a matter of math. But even if they can't, then their treasure can be nullified (multiply low number gives low number) and their military obliterated and infrastructure burned to the ground, and that is more than enough defeat to be something to be avoided. In the test server, I have two treasures, but I'm still not remotely a contender for top score because I am constantly under fire by attempts to nab it. And I wouldn't have it any other way Your suggestion would quite simply result in screwballs like me simply giving ourselves 100/100 taxes then taking stuff out from the alliance bank whenever we want to actually buy something, and thus it would absolutely be impossible to loot active or even inactive players. This is a good idea for treasure at least; I still think bounties should be tied to beige though since as I said before, if they persist past beige then they result in more wars and more attempts at gathering the bounty and thus making the fortification spam thing require more activity, strategy, and cost more in an appropriate way. But it really is ridiculous for someone to be able to just hold onto their treasure despite not having a military.

I suspect they were doomed from the point at which they based their whole concept on the ravings of a madman; their eugenics pseudoscience was never sustainable.

Actually, I'd dispute that their weapons were better. They may have been more sophisticated and individually superior (the StG 44 being a strong example of such) but it's been argued that they would have been better served producing a higher quantity of more basic weapons, making their expensive weapons worse in terms of their value towards actually winning the war. As for them getting a nuclear warhead, they didn't have the information that Allied scientists did regarding nuclear cross-sections being as different as they were for the different isotopes of uranium or about the utility of plutonium. At least, that's my understanding after watching a video on the subject; I've not taken formal classes on this. Also </derailment> You're super right.

Not really; they made too many enemies all at once and were critically hobbled by their own backwards ideology alienating many skilled scientists that would have otherwise been serious assets to their regime. Tactically they were strong, sure, but strategically, logistically, and technologically they had no possible chance. Thankfully. Look, if you're unwilling to provide evidence when it's asked for, then you can't expect to not be called out on that. I'm not doubting your claims, what I am saying is that Buorhann isn't defending anybody here.

Bounties aren't the only way to move money around, and they can be stopped with blockades, so that's not really a problem. The problem is simply that of making new nations and then dumping that money onto existing nations; but this is only a real issue in the test server, since everyone starts with 100 million, only 3/4 of a day time restrictions, and axes to grind. In the main server, it takes 3 days per reroll, each reroll gets about one million worth of rewards from the tutorial objectives, and there's already systems in place to prevent nations below a certain age from sending aid or trading at transfer prices. It wouldn't be difficult to extend that to bountie Why would it actually be a problem at all? It can allow relatively untraceable money transfers, but credits can already be redeemed on someone else's behalf. Even if you bought credits on the market, the inefficiency is comparable to the beige damage to infrastructure at least, unless the nation already had low infrastructure. At least, if the bounty wasn't extremely high. Besides, if someone's transferring money through bounties, then it's both noticeable and gives plenty of information on its own, since it shows that they have an ally they're unwilling to have evidence of.

Fortifying gives losing nations power, yes; but they would otherwise have none whatsoever. Beige gives time to recover and rebuild military, yes, but it doesn't stop nations from being immediately dogpiled by 3 downdeclares anyway as soon as it expires. And that's exactly what happens. Aggressive players can raid profitably, and they do; the new bounty system will allow them to take anonymous merc contracts and either attempt to beige the opponent or just launch a nuke for a quick payout. And beige attempts are successful more often than not, considering that avoiding beige requires opening your nation up to far more infra damage, military damage, and potential for cash losses from ground battles. The fact that beige can be avoided doesn't make it the best option, especially not for players with decent infra levels. Here's the thing that you're missing: raids happen at the lower tiers, or against the already defeated. Raiders go for inactive, low military, or new players, because those are the lowest risk targets. If those nations couldn't fortify their way out of beige, then they would permanently be stuck in a cycle of beige > rebuild > downdeclare'd > beige, and never escape unless they give up and blob together with a top alliance. On the other hand, if raiders go for active and wealthy players, then they're taking a greater risk, but if they succeed then they can actually expect to beige their opponent, since their opponent is otherwise going to lose more of his on hand cash and his expensive infrastructure. Fortifying doesn't help the bourgeoisie, and more importantly it shouldn't. Rather, it makes raiding the bourgeoisie much more lucrative and makes the game active and viable, rather than the current and past whales sitting on their invulnerable asses and squashing all potential rivals. You're absolutely wrong if you think that the game can't be easily won. If a world war happens, and one bloc becomes dominant, then they can beat down everyone that doesn't join them ad infinitum, and more importantly they would be forced to, lest they lose and then have the same exact thing done to them. This pattern is undeniable, and it's nothing short of irresponsible to try to deny it. If we ignore the risks of unstable equilibrium, then we're just going to be playing cyber nations 2.0, and for sheepy's sake lets avoid that at all costs! The only way to prevent that pattern from being sustainable is to allow defenders the option to cost their opponents more than their opponents gain from wars, and that's exactly what fortification does. This is based on a very false, and dangerous, premise. It is absolutely possible to defeat an active player in a war, fortification or not. If a player has lost millions worth of infrastructure, their whole military, and several of their improvements, then they HAVE lost, and that needs to be recognized. Fortification cannot prevent any of these things. If it happens, then they can't raid anyone themselves other than inactives or by attrition warring with missiles/nukes, and they can expect to be attacked on a constant basis until they can be rescued by counters or submit to beige. It may be possible for the defender to avoid yielding profit to their opponent, but that is something that does need to be allowed and encouraged. This is another critical point that you are missing. Since the very beginning, Arrgh has been able to perform their constant asymmetric guerrilla warfare because they used mechanics that allow them to preserve their resources despite being attacked by far stronger forces. You can easily beige an Arrgh nation, very easily in fact, but it is both useless and unprofitable to do so, just as if the Arrgh nation had fortified to avoid beige. The key difference is that fortification allows nations a much easier and simpler method of preserving their resources and avoiding yielding profit to their enemies, so that even a solo player can perform asymmetric warfare indefinitely, and without the need for complex logistics. (It does make Yarr more overpowered than it already was, but meh.)

Wait what? You leave your alliance in order to hit another alliance and you expect that to not affect your prior alliance? Pantheon has every right to respond however they choose to.

Absolutely not; fortifying is the only way for losing nations to survive as competitive entities. Without it, the game can easily be won in perpetuity, and that's something that must be avoided. Fortifying was already balanced to the best degree it can possibly be; nations currently need to be completely active and make no mistakes to fortify to safety, and cannot retaliate more than 9 or so action points worth, depending on the enemy attack patterns. That means that nations can avoid losing treasures and resource stockpiles and alliances can avoid bank losses, but they will still lose their military, infrastructure, IRL job, and sleep; and besides, any bounties on them will persist until they finally go beige. In fact, the way that bounties persist despite fortifying to war expiration makes fortifying all the weaker, since it doesn't remove that bounty. Any rebalancing, in either direction, would be a horrible mistake. If fortifying was stronger, then it would be too easy to use and unfair. If fortifying was weakened, then alliances and players will be forced to keep blobbing and avoid war until doomsday, or worse, hasten the coming of cybar naytions or Rumsod levels of crap gameplay. What I would say really needs to happen is for players and alliances to just get gud and learn to USE the tools that are presented to them. Right now, war can be waged without fear of effective permanent persecution; and real peace is something that can be rationally agreed to. If guerilla fortification strategies are removed, then peace is something that alliances must NEVER offer, since the only safety they can get is through putting their opponents into PZI. That kind of behavior leaves games deserted and devoid of life and players leave en masse, until the game becomes cybar naytions 2.0. Fortification avoids that fate.

I've got an idea! If people don't like that their enemies got votes, why not... go to war over it? It's a perfectly good CB

Agreed, but in the most toxic cases, that second chance should only come after there's been some evidence of improvement. That's my opinion anyway.

It's in response to to which I replied that which is in reference to the opportunity that he mentioned. Usually, any pixel hugger that's honestly aligned to someone would fight alongside them in case of war; especially when their bloc's readiness and the security of their precious pixels could be threatened, even indirectly.

I'm talking about anyone that aligns with players that actively promote nazi ideologies and do discord spam raids. But I'm sure there's not really that many of them, are there?

I'm not saying I can revitalize the game myself; I'm just saying that I can spend my time, energy, and resources towards that purpose, and that I'm encouraging others to do the same, or at least to avoid contributing to the problem. I do appreciate the support though

Well, it'd be a perfect opportunity as long as there aren't players that hug their pixels so hard they're willing to honestly ally with proven discord spammers and nazi sympathizers just to bolster their consolidation and numbers. And if there's many of those, then the game's worse off than I thought.

...Eh, you caught me, I was deflecting, and badly. I apologize for the low quality of the deflection. Anyway, my plan is to oppose anyone and everyone that exhibits behaviors that lead to stagnation and/or those that take scummy actions that, if widely adopted, would result in an environment conducive to stagnation. At least that's the general idea. Specifically, I've fought against the late alliances of The Royal Dragons and USMC, both of which were being lousy to their members. Epimetheus improved considerably and made a new, much better alliance with better officers after he was couped, while the guys behind the coup founded USMC, and kept being lousy. They even promised to PZI me and rebuild the damage I was doing rather than actually build their smallest members as I demanded. I can only hope that they learned their lesson and are treating their members as equals instead of tax farms in Apocalypse Meow now. I've also attacked a Roz Wei guy in response to their dogpile against tTO; completely independently. It's not much, but it's a push slightly closer to a balanced war that doesn't feed into the unstable equilibrium. I haven't mentioned it before since one missile is, again, very tiny, but it's still an example of the kind of action that I plan to take, and want to encourage others to seriously consider and adopt. Edit: Ah, right, there was that thing involving Hogwarts scheming and stuff. Sorry, I hadn't remembered :B Edit edit: If you want to continue this conversation, I'm happy to take it to discord or PMs; I feel like we're getting dangerously close to derailing here