Hafestus

How about allowing us to set which # of our nation's military is either reserved or active? So say your max aircraft is 1000, and you set your "active" component to 500 (even if you only have 400 aircraft). Any aircraft you have over 500 will feed into the active component when your aircraft are destroyed. An example, a nation with 2000 aircraft declares war on a 1500 aircraft nation. 1500 was expecting war so he is spending a lot of money keeping "750" airborne aircraft, and the 2000 nation has "1000" airborne aircraft. 2000 gets an immense triumph, but the next time he attacks it will still be "1000" on "750" aircraft fighting. This gives a buffer towards any blitz. Add a two turn delay to any change of % from reserves to active to give alliances a reaction time, make it expensive to keep a large active component in peace time, and max it at 50%.

IQ launched 4.5 bil worth in nukes.

I suggested bringing the 10 resistance increase down to 5 (or 6), so that it is now possible to beige your opponent while also being possible to delay a war, and also allowing fortify to decrease the amount of loot taken, as a means to prevent your opponent from gaining as much off of your defeat. Moneybags prevents the enemy from looting you as well, which also decreases profit motive if that's your main concern. You also can't loot credits. If you wanted to protect your money simply buy credits. If you want a "Victory" as the game defines it you need to beige your opponent, which is impossible. It absolutely shouldn't. If your opponent is defeated then you should win. I don't mind giving the loser an option to fight back, but if you lose then you should be beiged if your opponent decides that he wants to do so. I don't mind giving nations the ability to delay a war or to decrease the amount of loot that his opponent receives, but I do mind that it is impossible to win a war after your enemy has been defeated. I disagree, it may as well be an abuse of a broken game mechanic. And, as you pointed out, the bogged down alliance (or tier within an alliance) would be outnumbered 5:3. Why arbitrarily make things more difficult for the weaker guys? If the bigger alliance allows themselves to get into that situation then they should be beiged and looted. I think you are overstating how overpowered it is to beige your opponent. It's really not a big deal unless you are hoarding 100,000 steel, 2500 infra, or a treasure. You are going to lose most of your money and infra by the fighting and not from the beige itself.

I'm saying that the dominant nation should have the ability to win. I'm sure we could think of another way besides Moneybags to allow players to preserve their national bank, or to alleviate their losses, if that is the main concern (I'm not convinced that this is even necessary,) without making it impossible to defeat them in a war. I don't believe that it should be easy to preserve your bank, especially not to the point where it is impossible for somebody else raid it. In terms of protecting loot there is moneybags, or we could simply make nations unable to raid banks as Durmij suggested. We could leave the fortify option in the game, and reduce the MAPs that it restores from 10 to 5, and make it so that while you are fortified your enemy will receive less loot, and as a counter we could allow players to break fortifications through espionage. This is where you continue to lose me. A player could fortify past 100 resistance, and it's the easiest thing to do. They simply need to log in once a day, and press fortify three times. Sure, if that player wanted to counter attack, then they would also have to be careful not to go below a certain resistance level. I didn't deny that you could try to bait somebody into a counter attack and beige them, but then you would be gambling on your opponent making a nasty mistake. It is, however, impossible to beige somebody if they decide to fortify, and don't want to be beiged. But our opponents shouldn't be able to clog up our offensive slots with no resistance on their part, and with no hope of defeating them until the war expires in five days. You could try to spin being continually fortified against into a positive thing, but it's super lame. I certainly wouldn't buy that it's for my own good. In short we aren't going to find common ground if we both don't agree that an active nation holding a treasure or a large hoard should be able to be beiged

I'm concerned with the way in which war currently works and how looting functions. Fortifying, in its current state, is a mechanic that breaks certain aspects of the game. It was implemented with the intent of giving players an option to prolong a war, but it also happens to make it impossible to beige an active player, while making it possible to beige inactive players. Which I don't believe was ever the point of having the feature. In the past you could at least loot the resources that they were holding on to. Now it is only possible to beige and loot somebody when they choose to be beiged. Looting an inactive player is just another form of sitting on your ass to use your own words. I can't imagine how that is a fun way to play the game, other than the risk that maybe the person you are attacking will come online and god forbid actually fight back. What I am saying is that the only thing the fortify features does, is that it prevents nations from losing a small percentage of their bank when they do get beiged, and it prevents any active nation from losing treasure that may have spawned. It also affects alliance wars, because now when I fill my 5 slots, I can't simply beige one of my opponents and move on to the next target. I now have to wait for the entire war to expire even though my opponent may be utterly defeated. In theory it is possible to be able to beige somebody only if they don't fortify. That therein lies the problem. When you say bait what you are saying is that it is literally impossible to beige somebody unless they make a mistake, and you use the test server as an example. On the test server a turn happens every 30 minutes. In the actual game it is four times longer, and it is significantly more difficult to goad somebody into making a mistake. You seem to be against the idea of being able to loot national banks, rather than removing the option to fortify. Yet you still want to be able to loot another player's banks if they go inactive. Perhaps it's not fair for a small nation to be attacked and looted, but it's not meant to be fair. There are other ways to make smaller nation gameplay more viable without making it impossible to beige an active nation. As Durmij pointed out many game features revolve around the assumption that an attacking nation will be able to beige his opponent. Our main point of disagreement seems to be that removing the option to fortify would break the game. I don't see fortifying to be all that useful for independent nations unless you were trying to protect a hoard of resources or a treasure, and in the earlier case you could always make a deal with another alliance to hold on to your resources.

As you pointed out, it is still possible to be perpetually declared war against and lose all of your infrastructure and military units. What fortifying does is that it allows players to completely avoid being looted. This means that if a treasure spawned on your nation then nobody has a chance of taking it, and it suddenly becomes a viable strategy to put all of your alliance's steel into player banks rather than into the alliance bank. I also disagree that fortifying prevents big alliances from 'winning.' So long as two alliances are at war with each other at least one of them will be forced to stay mobilized, therefore making it profitable for even the winning alliance to want peace if they ever want to decommission their troops. What fortifying also does is that it suddenly makes it a good idea for rogue nations who don't belong in a big alliance to horde large amounts of resources in their own nations war chest without any repercussion. It doesn't do anything for giving smaller nations more power by preventing other nations from dog piling them. Your claim that it is absolutely possible to defeat somebody in war is true in the sense that you could destroy their units, but it's not true in the game's sense. It's simply not possible to defeat somebody in war if they continue to fortify. An alternative suggestion, which would seem to have the same effect and not as much downsides, is to simply remove the ability to loot alliance banks as well as remove the ability to fortify. Now it is in theory possible for an alliance to be at war indefinitely, while also being possible to loot another active player, collect his bounty, or take his treasure.

Fortifying gives losing nations too much power as it becomes impossible to beige anybody except on their own terms. They simply have to log in once a day before their MAPs hit 12. I don't know about losing sleep or taking time off your job. It takes only a few seconds to log in and fortify. The option to beige your opponent doesn't exist as a punishment for being inactive. The option to beige is there to allow aggressive players to raid, and to give the defender time to recover from a raid. It's simply not possible to raid anybody who is active. I would also disagree that without fortifying the game could easily be won (how?) There was a time when fortifying wasn't an option, wars were fought, and Arrgh was busy being Arrgh. What I'm suggesting is that it should be possible to defeat an active player in a war.

The ability to increase your resistance by fortifying should be entirely removed or severely rebalanced before the bounty system is implemented.

It costs 4 MAPs to fortify and it increases resistance by 10. It costs 4 MAPs to do a Naval attack, which decreases resistance by 14 if you get an immense triumph, and 3 MAPs to do a ground attack, which decreases resistance by 10. When you declare war against another nation without blitzkrieg or fortress, you start off with 6 MAPs and the war will last 60 turns. That gives you the potential to conduct 16.5 Naval attacks or 22 ground attacks, which will decrease resistance by 224 (16*14) or 220 (22*10) respectively, which is more than double the resistance needed to beige somebody. However, if I were to fortify, I would restore 160 (16*10) resistance. Meaning if I were to continually fortify the best you could do is bring my resistance down by 64 (224-160.) The only way you could beige somebody is if they are inactive or if they want you to beige them. Combine this with the new bounty system, and it becomes possible to choose who collects the bounty which is placed on you, simply by fortifying against the person you don't want to win.

I think you're some coastline hippy who owns a firearm but does not truly believe in the premise behind the 2nd A. I would love for you to tell me that I'm wrong, though. Regardless I thought that it was funny how him owning a rifle garnered more of a reaction from you than him saying that women shouldn't be allowed to vote.

You seem more offended by the fact that he owns a rifle than wanting to take away a woman's right to vote. Personally I believe women should have the right to own firearms and vote. Look at me being so progressive!