Taureg

What's next? Permission slips, Conduct Committees, Public Flogging if you don't play the game by certain accepted standards? How about we just let people play the game without constantly trying to devise ways to force them into "conforming" to someone else's notion of what the game is. "the idea behind this is to limit raiding:" Just get Sheepy to do away with raiding in the game. Your problem will be solved. The horrors of raiding will be eliminated, we'll be one step closer to cloning all players, another step closer to eliminating both politics and war from the game, and another step closer to the dream of renaming the game Pixel Empires.

Interesting. I've been meaning to pose a query along these lines myself. Thanks for the reminder. I agree with the above, but have also been concerned about the cost of infra as a throttle on building cities and nations vertically. Sheepy I remember quite some time ago when you wrote on how you would like to see nations building mega-cites of a million people or more. I would love to do that, but right now there aren't enough incentives to build vertically. The cost get progressively higher and higher, when in reality you should be able to build more for less, or at least more for the same. Once a certain threshold of base infra has been built the cost to add to it should come at a slower rate of increase, not a higher one. Capping commerce is also isn't realistic. As cities grow in size they become more and more centers of commerce more so than manufacturing. We should have more commerce available as cities hit certain growth thresholds. All of these nation sims impose a large penalty for population density. Far too large in my opinion. When 60% of the world's population live in cities, the logic the games use that people would rather live on farms seems just a bit flawed eh? The world's cities are growing, not shrinking. I think the game needs to be adjusted to reflect something closer to reality. Sure, crime and disease are legit factors, but the density factor is flawed. There are far more mega-cities in the world now than there were 20/30 years ago. If your really want to see million plus cities in the game there need to be fewer negatives and more incentives to build them. It can all be scaled to cities as they grow. One example would be to make the 25 point reward for a new city also available for hitting a certain milestones with existing cities. You hit 2,000 infra you get the 25 point score bonus. I don't want to co-op the OP's suggestion here or sidetrack it at all, I'm all for it. This dovetails with it though. If you think it should be a separate suggestion please feel free to spit it out.

Thanks for spending the time to check the math. Percentages can be misleading though if you don't know what the resulting number is. Regardless of what the real cash number is, it really is insignificant in the scheme of things. It's 30 days! It's not an ongoing revenue stream. Loss of alliance control and flexibility is the bigger issue. Everybody loses when there are more and more controls.

Yup those are the talking points that have often been repeated. None of these concerns are a big enough problem to warrant changes. I have yet to see one person in favor of implementing any of these auto-controls try to quantify just how big these supposed problems really are. Until that's done it's all just conjecture, and a "fix" looking for a problem.

Sheepy, these suggestions that have come up recently related to game activity issues really don't do much to move the game forward and probably do more harm than good. I certainly understand where you're coming from, share many of your concerns, but when I try to see the bigger picture it's really much ado about nothing. The "remedies" all result in taking more control over the game and I don't think that's a good thing. I really don't understand all the angst in these threads about inactives. How long are they a problem, really? Thirty days max eh? How much does an alliance really gain from them in that amount of time? The vast majority of them are lower ranking players who tried the game and left. Are those taxes really any kind of game changer for an alliance? More importantly, why exert so many auto-controls over players and alliances that they all look alike? The auto-controls that have been suggested here and the other thread only serve to force all alliances to act the same. That's not a good thing in my opinion and only takes a little game out of the game. These types of auto-controls remove some of the personality of an alliance. Part of the game is actually analyzing those personalities; how is the alliance being managed, drilling down through membership to asses it's strength, looking for weaknesses. This is a part of politics, and war. Chipping away at fringe parts of the game just because it isn't pretty is still chipping away at the game. I'm on record in many places about how an alliance should handle inactives, but I certainly wouldn't impose that on everyone. That's what many in these threads would have, and what these auto-controls would accomplish. Obviously the subject of inactives is a real problem for some, but the perceived problem and the real problem are two different things. Sheepy please don't add any more controls to the game that just homogenize players and alliances. You've already solved the problem with the 30 day auto-boot. There is no significant gain to be made by going any further. Let it be.

Kudos Reagan, you do The Family proud.

Nation ID: 2098 Post Count: 202 Link to Nation: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=2098

You play this game while watching Women's Intercollegiate Rodeo on ESPN 6.

Do I understand this right, the random destroy generator sees no difference between a farm, an air base, and a stadium? And why is power exempt? The game certainly doesn't have to be a slave to reality, but maybe just a wee bit would have warfare look a bit more like warfare. Highest priority targets would be military improvements, power and it's resources, manufacturing (munitions, gasoline, steel, alum), food supplies, then, anything else. Blowing up a shopping mall or stadium? Really? A 10% random generator for all improvements is the easy way out and not at all appropriate for what this game should be. It's a cop out. If you want wars to destroy improvements fine, but at least take the time to do it right.

Ships can destroy aircraft, that's why they have anti-aircraft guns on them. Ships destroying aircraft is defensive in nature. It's been awhile since I've done an air strike on navy, but I do believe some number of attacking aircraft are destroyed. So the game mechanics are correct. Ships destroy aircraft but only when they are being attacked, as it should be. Ships cannot be used offensively to attack aircraft.

Unfortunately the alliances don't do anything about their inactives do they. Push to gray after two weeks, push out of the alliance after 30, and out of the game after 45. It can only be done in conjunction with the long, long, long, awaited vacation mode.

Two week terms are too short, four would be better. Two weeks not enough time for decisions to have an impact and play out. Term limits, absolutely necessary for both. There should also be a cap on the number of times a player can be a representative in a given period of time. If we used four week election cycles for example, a player could only serve two consecutive terms, and only three terms in a six month period. This would go a long way toward addressing Adama's concern, which I certainly share.

Raiders don't harm the game, they're a fabric of the game. Real wars are rare. Without raiding all you've got is city building and alliances slapping each other on the back.

But yes, excellent work there. Hopefully we shall be able to exterminate every single one of these raiders. But then the forums would be dead.

Revenue and resources must be separated. That shouldn't be too daunting a task. The rest, no so much. Keep it simple, and...get 'er done!