Shiho Nishizumi

I'm very dreadful at drawing, but I refuse to use AI and would rather be original on my submission, so here you go. Should be clear on the image itself, but it's for WAP/Snow Birds.

It's definitely gone downhill the more the game shifted from an actual polsim to a managerial game of sorts. In my opinion, it's in a death loop where people don't engage in it because they deem it isn't worth it (especially relative to potential mistakes/risks), those people get worse at it due to not practicing it at all, which then reinforces the pattern of avoiding it. Some of the old hands can probably still do it if they wanted/cared enough, but that just circles back to its diminishing value due to how the game's evolved over the years. It's tragic, but I suppose that it is what it is.

I presume that this is aimed at the neutrals in this conflict. It's been brought up a few times to us. We weren't inclined to comment on it. However, given that you are seemingly intent on criticizing third parties who have remained quiet: While Eclipse and Grumpy have more visible whale tiers, Rose (and its allies) is not without one. It is fairly comparable, if a bit spread out. As far as we are concerned, you demonstrated that such collaboration among whale tiers was acceptable the moment you and ODOO intervened in an ongoing war, and with what concluded as the One Day War. Against a party that had no comparable whale tier, I should add. Given that such is so, lecturing these alliances for not taking a stand (on your behalf) against the evils of whale tier cooperation, when you yourself were unconcerned about the consequences thereof when it served your interests, is simply unbecoming.

Fair. I've just noticed that penpiko had asked it prior. It does bring potential concerns down a bit (especially if ships doing those missions have some sort of debuff), given that there'd be a question of whether just winging it, or having other people naval to whittle the guy down (with them using up 4 MAP's in the process). Pending testing (and final figures) of course, but it doesn't sound like it'd be something that'd be immediately overpowered.

I more or less agree with this. I'm someone who does think that turreting is overtuned at the moment. I also think that the constant nerfs to conventional military have been such to where, other than buying soldiers for easy chip damage, they're largely (if not entirely) unworthwhile to build as the losing side, especially when contrasted with turreting. Turreting is basically serving as the sole crutch (albeit it be a really good one at such) for those losing a war. A proper fix would involve nerfing turreting a bit/some while buffing military in ways which would make it appealing to use (from a damage standpoint) as the losing side. It's tricky to find a way in which to achieve the latter, as the most straightforward ways of doing so (buffing upfront damage) is something that's been chipped away at for nearly five years now. Increasing the (resource) cost for nukes would be fairly inoffensive in both directions, though yeah, it wouldn't meaningfully change things other than have a bit higher aluminum (or uranium, or whichever resource it is that gets increased in cost) consumption during wartime.

I haven't got too much of a thought on proposal A for the time being, though I'd note that giving ships this kind of ability would obviously provide larger nations yet another avenue of responding to being updeclared on, and that such needs to be kept in mind when deliberating introducing this. I suppose that the obvious question would be; would the IT be removed from that specific war, or across the board? The increased casualty rate is a good thing; ships are comically bad at killing other ships as is, so it'd be good for them to at least be able to kill each other a bit better. Proposal B; I think that it'd be overly punishing for people losing wars (let alone raiders); The targeted nature of the attacks means that you can pinpoint what you want to destroy, and it being on ships, means that you can do twice as many attacks with the same MAP's as a missile would, and not have to worry about ID interceptions. If you're running tactician (which I imagine many would swap to), then you'd be able to do stuff like reduce four cities down to one refining each in a single war, which over the course of a few rounds, it'd basically kill autarky for that nation. Alternatively, you could go after commerce to harm that nation's cash flow and being able to keep running as the infra gets lower, let alone buy nukes/missiles (I know that daily bonus is a thing, but you need to keep in mind that not everyone has the minimum unlootable cash to safekeep it, and it doesn't move if your DC is offset). Something about it would need to be changed (whether it be probability, or amount of improvements destroyed, or have the chance be proportional to the amount of ships used [unlikely due to coding considerations]) for it not to just strip losing nations whatever production they do get to keep while being rolled.

A rather straightforward suggestion of allowing the option to be disabled, given its rather niche and limited (or simply redundant, for groups with bots/tech) application, and the risk of an accidental full bank send (more likely on mobile and/or with slow internet). Alternatively, having a tickable box or some sort of secondary confirmation to ensure that you actually mean to select all, as opposed to it being a misclick, would likely work as well.

The vacuous and selective nature of your argumentation was such that I was disinterested in replying further, and the writing in the last line of my reply already suggested as much. The rambling nature of your reply simply reinforced that thought. As for comments on my persona and my actions being 'over the line'; they are not. Anyone is welcome to make those comments. And if the criticism is valid, I will listen to it and acknowledge it. Especially if they come from people of worth, and/or who are close to me. Someone whom I've hardly interacted with on a personal basis in over four years, who won't even recognize basic truths such as that he got bailed out by two spheres on a conflict of his own doing, and who hurls those comments as a surrogate for an argument, isn't one of those people. With that being said; Tarroc is indeed a worthy leader, and I am glad that you have finally come around and begun to recognize his worth, especially after he outplayed you for over a year, and checkmated your attempt at securing a win during One Day war. Unfortunately, I think that such compliments will mean little for him. They may have more heft if they come from one of your handlers. Which one should we page?

What got determined pre-war was heavily reconsidered during it. Your non-argument has been duly noted. I wasn't a participant, but the information was relayed to me. If what you're saying is true, then I was lied to while I was there, which... I find to be unlikely. Yes, you didn't agree to them, or bother pursuing further talks, because doing so by that point was moot, given the planned Rose/ODOO entry. I'm glad that we're finally in agreement. Counter argument? I simply presented tiering charts so that people can contrast what's being argued to them, and decide by themselves. Simple as. I'm quite literally on record saying that I wouldn't have even mentioned it, had it been your ordinary dogpile. Right. Firstly, and broadly (this is explicitly not referring to Quack, which I will address later specifically, as you made a point of bringing it up); if spheres are roughly equal, you will often see some sort of joint hit on them. This is fairly common behavior given the tendency towards hedging bets to secure a win. Where not, it's usually because there's some other kind of advantage, either in tier or in military (Hollywood with militarized Grumpy/TKR/Guardian hitting mostly 0350 Celestial during that war, the surprise hit by WELP on ODOO during their war in October of last year). Stuff like the Casino Royale is rare (it was nice to see it happen). To pretend that t$ perpetually has an unassailable sphere that requires two to take it down is silly. Between the Florida and Fortune wars, the only tie it had was to Legion. Big Short was a solo hit by Hollywood, and that is a war which people still meme about to this day. Do you want to claim that Wayward was unassailable by itself? If yes, then congratulations on being as guilty as we apparently are, given your alliance's lineage, and given that sins of the father is apparently in vogue with TFP's reasoning for hitting EVH. As for Quack, and by contrast, Fortune. Quack was inarguably the biggest, and by a big margin, and consistently so. Fortune, not so much. At some times it was, at some times it wasn't. It varied depending on which ties got added and got cut across the game. It was roughly comparable to the other spheres in the game. It was definitely a very strong sphere, irrespective of whether it was technically the biggest or not. Saying "biggest" without the due context is meaningless. It may as well be empty sloganeering. As for Grumpy and Guardian being NAP'd; they hit Fortune in January. I actually applaud them for doing so and going for a knockout hit in the face of a numerical disadvantage. However, that they hit them is not an aspect to be omitted. As for your assertion of needing to hard updeclare, I'll say two things. One, yes, that's how it works when you have a tiering disadvantage but a numerical advantage in the lower tiers. It'd have happened here had it been something like you, TFP and Penta versus us, for example. Two, and I am not going to fault you for this since I think that you had quit by this point; this sort of aggressive updeclaring had to be done during Brawlywood on part of Rose/BW against Hollywood as well. Back to Quack; Quack was inarguably the largest sphere. You're also leaving out that Quack was what was left of a project that was meant to counter IQ. IQ died, and some people didn't even wait for its corpse to go cold before pointing fingers at Quack being the new rising hegemon. People took a look at that, could tell that a good number of them also had scores to settle, and decided not to split in the face of that. As for the war itself; you're reducing it to just dogpile, and ignoring the clear paperless arrangement that had been set in place, which is what many had taken issue with. TKR proceeded to hit Rose because of those in what became Guns and Roses. At any rate; was staying together as Quack? It led to a rolling, so I can't necessarily say that it was. I doubt that splitting would've spared its constituent parties (or at the very least t$) from a rolling either. So, as far as t$ was concerned, it was probably damned either way. All I'll say is that I'm fairly certain that it would've split, had you waited a few weeks for it to deliberate following the game's most destructive war. Alas you didn't. At this point, it's simply history, and it is what it is. I simply find it a bit poetic that you found yourselves complaining about not being given any time to split from Rose during Dodge This, nearly four years later. Finally, since you like to talk about big spheres, groupings and consolidation, I'll post a screenshot of one, and let you point out who can hit you on a one on one: Pot meets kettle. You haven't shared anything that isn't outside of the public domain either. I am simply playing by the rules that you yourself deem acceptable. It is a bit late to be changing the game rules now. Speaking about sharing that which is in the public domain, and with regards to EVH; you're welcome. I can't make the blind see, as much as I would like (not that I was under any illusion that you would). So much so that you don't seem to acknowledge that fundamentally, we're fine with you hitting us out of revenge. However, there are things we don't agree with, and have answered accordingly. First via a RoH, and then, by each individual. Tarroc more politely. Me, less so. Your response has seemingly mostly devolved into ignoring and side stepping that which you can't address, self-patting over alleged admissions, double standards (ironic), and finally, "lol you shilling". Talk about a classic. It is a bit sad to see, but I guess that it is what it is. Enjoy the rest of the war that you spent a year lusting for.

I believe that Tarroc will be addressing these, as per your request, so I'll put them aside for now. I will post a single image, with added context, because an image speaks louder than a thousand words. This is an internal tiering chart dated November 4th. It excludes Carthago and KT, because again, they were not a part of SAIL. As for 'copping'; t$ presented TKR its 72 hours while Rose and Singularity were still deliberating whether to split or to consolidate, the former of which was done not out of any concern about the balance of power, but because it was deemed more viable. You have already been told why you were asked to peace out with WTF/UPN first. I won't waste time rehashing it. With that said, t$ did not present you anything because you couldn't be bothered to even reach out to WTF/UPN for a week, and then basically disregarded talks with WTF/UPN for the next one because by that point, those talks were moot given that you had your rescue planned and being lined up. "t$ is keeping us at war because they're making us talk to WTF/UPN, but we won't engage in any meaningful dialogue with WTF/UPN therefore perpetuating our state of war" is as circular as it gets, and not a convincing attempt at sidestepping why it went for a month without you getting stuff from us (you not doing as asked because you had put together a better alternative by expanding and winning the war). Your recollections about Fortune war are faulty at best. I remember that coalition very well. I remember people talking themselves up into straight up naming the war after WANA, just to humiliate him further, until I told them to cut the crap. I also wouldn't necessarily call it drama-free, albeit the drama was within the coalition due to it being very fragmentized. There definitely were smoother peace processes than Fortune. Right. To boil this down to its essentials: 1) We dogpiled you twice. 2) This war is a retribution for the dogpiles we've done to you. I will post three images. The first is Florida war (caveat that it includes KT; being frank, I'd remove them if I could given that their impact during it was limited, but alas, I can't. Off the top of my head, it should mean parity or slight edge for ODOO on 31-39, so treat it as such), the second is January war before TFP's hit (it was provided to me by someone yesterday), the third one is current. All of them are from CTOwned, just so that there is consistency across all three. Again, I'll let the images do the talking, and let people draw their own conclusions. Your attempt at spinning something that we, and I, wrote against me is endearing. I'll give you this much Sketchy; you coming here to do exchanges with us is definitely infinitely more commendable than those who just dropped a meme DoW and went back into hiding in their group chats. To your point though; yes, winning and losing is a cycle. I've probably been rolled a dozen times by now. Being rolled, especially in these circumstances and given what I know, doesn't bother me one bit. However, I am not going to stay quiet just because some people think that winning any given war earns them some kind of right to say things unchallenged. It doesn't. This is double true when it comes to bad arguments and falsehoods. And to write off the responses to those as "complaining" and "handwringing" is simply laughable. Yes, bringing 1500 nations to hit us is notable, both as a matter of sheer numbers (up there but not at the top; One Day War, Duck Hunt and possibly another one or two surpass it) and specifically ratios (likely unmatched outside of a micro/minor conflict), so I'll note it, for the simple reason that it is notable. Had you brought about half as many, I'd not even be mentioning it since there'd be little worth noting. Likewise, I'll note your talk about this being put together before EVH split from us (I'm sure it was), just for you hit both of us anyways on separate dates; you guys obviously deemed it more advantageous (it self evidently was) to do so, contrary to your claim of the gap in a dogpile being irrelevant. I'll also note you (Singularity) hitting EVH at all after promising a reset, when all you had to do to honor your word was stay put. At the end of the day, you (and others) made certain decisions, implemented them in certain ways, and justified them in some way or the other. And it's very much a run the gamut kind of thing. *Insert alliance here* hit us because of revenge? That's fair. TFP hit us in a similar way we hit them in January? No complaints there. People start claiming falsehoods? I'll address it. People are wrong somewhere? I'll correct it. There's inconsistent or hypocritical behavior? I'll point it out. It's as simple as that.

Right Sketchy, I'll be blunt because I would prefer not to spend entire days going around in circles, and there are some harsh truths that need to be said. The simple truth of the matter is that this goes back to a rushed and badly timed merger and war. Singularity's merger happened prematurely, as it is my understanding that it was meant to take place after the ODOO war. The merger saw Cataclysm shift from ODOO to Florida, and merge with Paradise into a large alliance. Both the shift of power and the birth of a new, powerful alliance put a target on Florida's back. People in Florida knew that this presented a risk that was only going to increase the longer it went on for, which is why war plans against ODOO were accelerated. This acceleration clearly led to insufficient preparation work for the war itself, which became evident on the days immediately prior to the war; internal communications were awful, and bereft of any real leadership. Precious time needed for the blitz proper was instead being spent on elementary preparation work such as getting alliances to actually commit. To call it disjointed would be understating it. You combine that with a Rose that had recently burnt bridges with a number of alliances (and Singularity’s constituent alliances not being darlings in on themselves either), a MMR disadvantage, and Rose having milcom issues during that specific war, and you get the recipe for a rolling. One in which Singularity performed well, especially when compared to Rose, but a rolling nonetheless. Rather than engage in any sort of self-reflection on the failures which led to this rolling, Singularity proceeded to throw tantrums; it threw one at Rose, its own ally, blaming and mocking it for a botched blitz. It threw one at t$ for spoiling its debut war. It threw one at several other parties as well. According to you, everyone else except Singularity was at blame for the loss, as if you were somehow particularly entitled to winning. Talk about a lack of self-accountability and sense of entitlement held in equal measure. Singularity swore revenge up and down, and not only did it swear it, but also plan for it. Yes, you did plan for revenge on t$, alongside others. I can say that with full certainty, because it is something that you told Rose as both of you discussed postwar plans and arrangements, and I was Rose at the time. It is information that was made available to me, given that I was a highly positioned advisor there. At any rate, why did those plans fall by the wayside, I don't know. But they did, and after spending months rolling House Stark and WTF/UPN, all the while gloating about growing while being on a war footing, you found yourself once again getting your ass handed to you by SAIL, and by t$. You keep trying to bring up Carthago and KT as being some sort of secret extensions of SAIL’s. They were not. Had anyone else tried to move on them, SAIL would’ve simply said “Sorry Carthago, we offered you a spot here, you declined. You will have to live by the consequences of that decision.”. It’s as simple as that. The only thing the whole affair informs is that your grudge list was longer than Sulla’s after his civil war, and that people in SAIL were aware of it. Carthago and KT were aware of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if most people knew of it. We knew that you weren’t going to stop with KT (no, we don’t care about the validity of your grievance given that you were out to roll us as well), and had no interest in being picked off piecemeal. Our reasoning and actions were valid, and doubly so given recent events between you and EVH. You made overtures of burying the hatchet with them after saying that you blocking them on Penta left you honors even. They split from us in a bid at improving relations with you, and you repaid them by joining a comically lopsided war against them, when you could have simply stayed out of it and done good by your overtures. Who are you even trying to fool here? Do you want to talk about revisionism? Because we can talk about revisionism. You're making yourself out to be this helpless victim being kept at war against your will. The reality is that you were quite happy to be at war, as long as it was favorable to you. I already mentioned HS/WTF/UPN, so I'll follow it up with you bitterly opposing the end of what became the One Day war, because that was your chance at exacting your revenge, and you felt that got snatched away from you. If you genuinely believed this tale of protracted war followed up by Sevres-like terms that you're pushing, you would have been more than content by the fact that the war had ended and that you had not been subjected to these fantastical terms. Instead, you greatly resisted any ideas of peacing out, and only caved as a result of unrelenting pressure being placed upon you, while throwing tantrums along the way. Such was the degree of your tantrum and sense of entitlement, that not only did you demand a four month NAP, but were demanding so because you were rushing to announce it internally. Rather than show anything resembling gratitude towards ODOO, Singularity instead showed resentment and complained about alleged broken arrangements. Once again, not an ounce of energy was spent engaging in self-reflection, with you instead opting to spend it blaming everyone but yourselves. Just like you had done during Dodge This, except that this time, you had well and truly gotten yourself rolled solely due to your own actions, and the behavior that you engaged in between September and December of 2023. All in all, wholly unbecoming behavior by an individual and alliance which, at the end of the day, had gotten itself rolled and had to be bailed out by third parties. Going back January, since you claim that you were kept at war as the result of some wicked trickery; the truth is that you came to SAIL two weeks in, which is premature given that usually one side contacts the other three weeks in. You did it at the two weeks mark because, both between you using them and SAIL spying them, your stockpiles of nukes and missiles had been exhausted, and most of the damage that you were going to do had already been done. SAIL had no interest in a premature peace, especially given the ongoing parallel TFP war, just because you were just about done having your share of the fun. Meanwhile, your conflicts with WTF/UPN were still ongoing. These were alliances that had ties with CoA, and CoA obviously wanted to have them peaced out. CoA was a member of SAIL, and addressing their concerns/wishes was something that we were obviously going to do. Hence, you were asked to peace out with them first. It took you an entire week to get around to doing so, and when you finally did, you were already in the process of preparing to hit SAIL with the support you had secured from Rose and ODOO, making those talks effectively a waste of time. To briefly touch upon the WTF/UPN terms; they were stupid, and I am sure that had they actually been pressed, WTF/UPN would have been told to knock it off unless if they wanted SAIL to peace out first and for them to be left by themselves, since SAIL was not about to postpone its own peace over a hold-up with WTF/UPN. As an aside, your non-analogy to TFP and Penta is pitiful; not only are you in a coalition with them; you’re directly allied to them, and all of you hit us at the same time. Unlike UPN/WTF, it is the same war that was declared at the same time by one group against the other. Finally, SAIL had no intention of presenting any terms besides an AoD and a NAP. You keep claiming nonsense that has no basis in reality, simply to paint a false image of a victim deserving of pity. An image that you are still trying to push now, as you simultaneously boast, after getting your ass handed to you twice and lusting for revenge for over a year, off the back of the most lopsided coalition this game has ever seen. I find it genuinely difficult to gauge which one of the two is more pathetic. They may well be equally pitiful. Lord knows that I’d have sunk rock bottom if I was forced to do either or, let alone both. Fortunately, I don't feel the need to have an overwhelming coalition behind me to be able to speak my mind. I don't need to be winning to do it either. I also know when I've wronged and when I've been wronged, and have no issues admitting to such. Sketchy, I'm going to tell you right now; you’re peddling lies, and you know full well that you’re peddling lies. You know that there was no nefarious plan conceived for Singularity during the January war. Everyone knows that you have been meaning to roll t$ ever since Dodge This. You know that Singularity is no victim. You know that nobody believes it. Your lying is not deceiving anyone, nor is getting you anywhere. You are simply doing yourself, and your alliance, a disservice. Just stop.

To my knowledge, there's a grand total of one person doing it.

SCUD hunting is the stupidest example you could bring up for it, given that it was an abysmal failure. Regardless, the whole case use of nukes/missiles is to use when you have no conventional military. People that have conventional military will just use it because it's otherwise better in all respects (unlike real life where a nuclear weapon, even tactical, has unparalleled potency).

Probably a fair bit difficult to code, but being able to invest cash/refined to improve output/decrease upkeep/etc of any given refining improvement would be pretty neat. Not sure if it would be better at the base city level (how land works) or at a nation level where it'd be the investment divided by the number of cities, i.e. 100000 invested would have half the effect on a two city nation as it would on a one city nation.

In fairness, Keegoz did mention in RON that simple changes are much better because of the dev team having to deal with bloated legacy Alex code. Which does mean that stuff like the stuff you suggested is probably unviable. Otherwise, I'd have brought up an idea I pitched like six years ago of having an extra improvement category (something like consumer goods) which uses up refined resources and gives you cash. It does surprise me a bit that such an improvement category doesn't exist, given that it doesn't add any new resources, and I imagine would be relatively simple to implement (especially given that stuff like generals is being considered/implemented).

They still would not seemingly come anywhere near close to competing, based on this quick sheet I put together. It'd more or less double operating expenses for NPP's (alongside improvements), but it'd still be saving a significant margin compared to non-NPP (especially when you consider improvement slots saved for production and not mitigating disease). Obviously ignoring initial start-up cost of building the plant itself. There's also the questionability on the wisdom of increasing usage of improvement slots for it, given the context of increasing usage of slots for other stuff (crime and refining). It seems like a triple kick on the nuts for leaner builds. Amusingly, increasing the amount of NPP's needed would unintentionally add redundancy and make builds that run on low infra after this infra is destroyed (raider/turret/people losing wars) even less likely to get lucky nuke struck and have a city go unpowered that way, though that's relatively minor all things considered. Total amount of resources as being a point of concern makes little sense. Total amount of resources will tend to, and is going to, increase given time and people building up cities (and consequently stocks). This is a natural process and not a point of concern in on itself. This accumulation would be an issue if it was leading to a situation where prices were plummeting as a result. That's not what's happening. They've more or less been stable and/or increasing over the past year. What this means is that even though the overall resource count has been increasing, their supply has not. This makes sense considering that where refined are concerned, significant portions of the total amount are WC related and therefore not available for sale. And while they do get used up in war, they're invariably going to go back to whatever the WC requirements of each alliance is. In other words, they represent a floor, and this floor is inaccessible for purchase. Even with that put to the side, not all what's produced is available for sale; some people like to hoard (or simply forget), others trade internally. Others bulk trade, and while this bulk trading is done at a lower price relative to the average market price, it isn't directly applying downwards pressure to prices as it isn't being put out there to undercut other offers. This leaves a further reduced amount of refined being put up for sale on the public market (the average by which we go by), and clearly it hasn't been enough to depress prices, or even keep them stable, compared to a year ago. In short, increase on total resource count is a natural phenomena, and by itself isn't much of a point of concern. It is a point of concern if this translates into oversupply which is disproportionately depressing prices. The reality is that supply has been low enough to where prices have been stable if not increasing. As for the rest of the premise; I don't even think that there'd be a mass swap to refined. Raws are pretty high, and occasionally better than refining as is; doubling the amount of improvements needed for refining would essentially collapse the viability of refining on the short term and lead to people swapping to raws instead. This would immediately increase the prices of refined resources while it'd take time for the increased (theoretical) supply of raws to have an impact on the viability of those builds over refining. It might regulate itself on the longer term, but definitely not under current prices. All to... preempt a theoretical issue that is far from manifesting itself as of this moment, and which I don't think would even happen were food production to be heavily nerfed by removing the gearing bonus. Such an unfounded theoretical concern doesn't warrant such a harsh preemptive measure that would disproportionately affect the viability of lower infra builds, especially given the other suggested changes.

Firstly, this is a blanket statement that doesn't universally apply (let's argue a pure hypothetical and say that TI and Guardian are both by themselves, and TI hits Guardian; it's an updeclare effort). Secondly, I don't think that milcoms would overburden their larger guys disproportionately; it makes sense to give the people with unused capacity something to do (within reason). Both to leverage said capacity and to give something to do (people do like burning pixels). Thirdly, I don't see why a greater group should be unable to crush a smaller group on a pitched fight; it's what one would expect to happen. The thing that people are forgetting when talking about "balancing" the wars by doing this is that reducing defensive slots by one invariably means lowering the burn rate for the aggressor as well. In other words, they're not as easily subduable as a 3 offensives (or higher) nation would be. Numbers would still give the advantage by letting people have excess capacity to overcome an attritional battle with an smaller (overstretched) enemy. Especially given that the longer it goes, the more usage one can get out of spy ops on military (this favoring larger groups even harder). Larger alliances (everything else equal) have a bigger taxbase which to leverage for WC accumulation. Older ones also have an advantage in this department simply by having existed for longer and thus having been able to accumulate these assets. Attritional warfare is going to disproportionately affect smaller alliances due to wealth and revenue disparity. I don't think that more blows traded (especially in a context of dogfights which do minimal infra damage) would offset this. As for "How things used to be"; respectfully, I'm not sure if you're old enough to where you can remember the days of sub 1000 munitions, 2500sh steel and 1700 bauxite (of course, in context of the game at the time). Also, no. Tanks used to be more expensive back in the day (twice as much steel, as a matter of fact), but planes used to be 3 aluminum and got increased to 5, while ships also got increased from 25 to 30 steel. There was give and take. One could argue that there being guerrilla warfare back then (which has since died) did present an extra expenditure that no longer exists, but there are three problems with that; one, it was sadly never that widespread. Secondly, you can build more missiles (and nukes) now, which is an offsetting factor (especially since turreting is far more common than guerrilla used to be). Thirdly, that'd be an argument for bringing guerrilla back since it was pretty fun, more than to justify grindier wars now. Of course, this ignores stuff like ground zero meta (no steel spent on tanks), and furthermore, pre-resistance wars where if you lost, you simply lost because there was zero comeback, but even that is before my own time (technically I joined pre-resistance changes, but my first real war was with the resistance change already being in place). I'd make a joke about Leo the Lame's BK where BK forgot to actually do dogfights during AC, but that's a bit besides the point. You're right though, PnW's skill ceiling is low where the mechanics are concerned. The argument is one of implementing something. For it to be worthwhile to implement it needs to be superior. The question should be "Is the system good enough to excuse, among other things, slot wastage?". I've gone over the downsides (might as well be "one of the reasons why it's bad" since I'm not particularly a fan of the idea), but yes, it is objectively a bad thing. ...which smaller alliances would have a more difficult time at, given what you inferred earlier: I'll argue a hypothetical and pick Singularity since their compacted tiering at C40 lends itself well to this. Let's say that they have to fight Guardian. Anything from 40-45 is basically wasted slots they can do nothing about. Their C50+ has enough spare capacity where you could throw a C30 at it (very bold and not great). 54 and up is where there'd be enough slots to throw another C40 at, and due to Singu's tiering, their next smaller nation is 35 (realistically 34's and 33's). Of course, in reality it'd be more complex given sphere wars and such, but it does serve to illustrate the point of how you're just screwed having to accept the unused capacity is going to waste if your tiering isn't matching. This implies that the smaller alliance has the more competent milcom. Again, not a given, and given the most probable case, it's the other way around. More rooms to oversee would definitely disproportionately affect the smaller alliances that have only one person (maybe a couple) running things as opposed to larger alliances with a proper apparatus that can more readily digest this workload (one single person can only track so many things at once).

Smaller alliances aren't more inherently organized. They're definitely easier to organize and run given the same people/staff (and will be more organized given that same staffing), but the thing is, by and large, they don't have the same people/staff. Larger alliances have an advantage on attracting, generating and retaining talent. The necessity of an apparatus to handle such mass lends itself towards that (assuming it's a well functioning one, of course). The premise isn't one that there's a very good milcom in mainstay alliance and very good milcom in smaller alliance. The premise is usually mainstay having good milcom and smaller has some pretty mediocre/bad one. It'd make milcom harder across the board both in planning and war rooms management. And no, the smaller alliance wouldn't be able to magically use defensive slots more effectively, because the impediment is simply "No more than X numbers of cities can declare on this guy". That's a matter of "Are we tiered in such a way where we can minmax this?". Even if all of your nations are at the exact same city count (not a given or frequent for smaller alliance), you aren't going to be able to optimally hit all nations without wastage. Trying to shift the logic to an attritional one doesn't favor smaller alliances. Nobody (except I suppose the truly desperate) would send a C20 on a C40, especially round 1 where there are other tiers to deal with. Good milcom will try to translate their advantage (if any) in the lower tiers by scaling upwards, not by straight up suiciding someone onto someone who has twice the city count.

...no. Being rolled/low infra, as an objective matter, does present an opportunity cost, by virtue of money not made that way. It can be offset by whether that person is raiding or not, and money they extract from turreting. The former can very much be more profitable than farming, while the latter doesn't seem to be (especially if it's coming at the expense of raiding, though some of those Arrgh contracts seemed profitable enough). Whether those people care about this opportunity cost is another matter (evidently they're unfazed by it), and it is this indifference to it what makes it strong. But "You're missing out on x revenue by not farming" is well, a constant. More applicable to turrets than raiders, but turret is the point of discussion here. As I said, if the guy is hitting several people then it is unrealizable. If he's hitting just a few within the same sphere it isn't that complicated. As for risks; on the nuke war, the guy needs four nukes landing out of 5. This is a likely beige (you can nuke beige someone from daily production). On the missile wars, they need to land six of the eight missiles they can launch total. The thing about missiles is that at the base rate of one, you can't beige someone off of daily production. Granted, it is easy enough to build 2-3, but this does mean that not all of those wars will be beigable. It the guy can accrue six days of beige, it does mean that the cycle attempt will fail. If not, then he should be cycleable. Eating a beige is basically a judgement call of whether you would rather eat some damage upfront so you can work towards permanently shutting down the guy, or keep eating the daily damage. If the guy is warring several people where you can't coordinate to starve him out then eating a beige doesn't make sense. Neither does if the guy is just making the rounds and is likely to just focus on someone else. If he's there set to turret you for months, then it might be worth biting that bullet if it can mitigate damages long term. As for loot; I don't see why people should be carrying enough to where it'd replenish his WC if they're expecting to be beiged. You know from the get go that you can be beiged nearly four days into a turret war, there's no surprise element there. I don't think that requiring a certain infra level would do much (though I wouldn't mind it); it'd kill that 0/0 gig, but at that point you're birthing an autarky turret that is better still. The problem with the mechanics is that you're likely targeting something else in the process. Beige is obviously going to affect wars and is an extremely contentious subject, going after the improvement slots would also affect raiders and if not done in a specific way, people losing wars. Walking back the updeclare range would specifically target turrets, but that one got added with the explicit intent of allowing whales to be targeted (which it succeeds at), so that's unlikely to change. Adjusting costs would disproportionately affect turrets dedicated to the niche since it'd be a compounding cost to them, but I doubt that it'd deter them, and do question as to whether making turreting more difficult is the better avenue than making it less effective.

I'm aware there's a nation doing it. I'd focus on the 'a'. It's a novelty that's broken in the logical sense and is infuriating, until you realize that the guy has no improvements and is therefore making no resources and little cash. The opportunity cost is substantial, and more importantly, he can be cycled due to no autarky. It's not infallible. Realistically speaking, Hatebi's gig is far more effective due to autarky. And while you're nominally inflicting damage on such a build, in practice it is basically moot due to dirt cheap infra (and hunting for improvements isn't exactly reliable outside of you running Tact on some guy running Pirate). I also think that you're being far too optimistic about the ease of getting those six million when most people can't even be bothered to log in every consecutive day, let alone play baseball or do ads (granted, you can autoplay ads through scripts, but that still takes a pretty amount of time and doesn't always work). The offensives become an issue if the guy's hitting several alliances. If he's focused on a select few, I'd like to think that it'd be simple enough to coordinate cycling. I do agree with that. I wouldn't say that exchanging nukes or missiles with a turret can pass for a counter for a number of reasons. For one thing, it isn't cost effective. Secondly, you're extending the period of time that war is going on (meaning, turret gets to lob more stuff), which rules out the targets from doing so. There isn't much incentive to send counters to do that job because of the costs involved (including increased upkeep due to wartime). The 'problem' lies in improvement survivability. I use quotation marks because this is actually a pretty good/necessary aspect in the context of nations being rolled so they still have some sort of economy going on; it's a silver lining in a context where the bulk of their income is gone alongside their infra. Normally, it'd be an overall suboptimal state of affairs that one would try to fix as soon as possible; it's just that it gets brought to the fore in the context of perma turrets who don't care much for farming/making money. Turretting was essentially pigeonholed into having to serve as the main way of dealing damage for rolled nations during a war, because of obtuse thinking such as Alex's inadvertently gutting conventional guerrilla time and again. I do think that it is overtuned at the moment, and ideally there'd be a balance between both turretting and conventional guerrila to make for a more engaging experience for the rolled parties, but the latter requires buffing the 'alpha' damage militaries do, which Alex thinks is horrible because he thinks that wars being decided day 1 is horrible (even though they're still decided day 1 after all the changes), so that's never going to happen. You're left with this mechanic that is used by two completely separate groups of people: on one side, rank and files getting rolled during a global, and on the other, people who are dedicated to the niche. For the former, the turreting is unremarkable because in spite of all the buffs, people just aren't dedicated enough to lob nukes/missiles every day, alongside other factors that highlight that it really is more of a silver lining thing. For the latter, it looks broken (especially if the person doesn't care about the growth/economic cost that comes from turreting). The latter are also an extremely reduced group of just a handful of people. Given that this mechanic is shared by both, the question thus becomes; is it worth nerfing it due to a group of people that can be probably counted with the fingers in a single hand, at the expense of everyone else that have to fall back on this mechanic as their sole realistic recourse while they're getting rolled?

If they behave like an all or nothing unit like missiles and nukes do (i.e. full res damage or blocked), then 2 resistance damage per MAP spent would make it nearly equivalent to a nuke's resistance damage, which seems fine.

For one thing, its cost is closer to 1.25b-1.3b. Secondly, it's priced that way as a lazy way to introduce a resource sink, because apparently the way to add resource sinks to the game is a one-time purchase project, rather than reoccurring costs.

That ignores the little/no ground metas of the day where it was feasible to ground attack for that cash. That's not realistic anymore. The 2m log-in bonus does guarantee a nuke, but there are missiles and ops on top to do. If you're running no infra (by which I take as meaning something below 600-800 because 600-800 is what you rebuild to to recruit military), then you're anywhere between making pennies and operating at a loss leading to bill lock (which means no resource production or commerce). Of course, there are other ways to get cash (sell improvements), but increasing the cash cost would make them disproportionately harder to use. From memory, the single biggest hike was on planes with the increase from 3 to 5 aluminum per plane. Tanks got their steel cost halved while ships got their steel price slightly increased (If I recall correctly, from 25 to 30). There was also some tweaks to the gas/muns usage of some of them. I don't recall nukes/missiles being adjusted either way, and I don't think that it'd be the best way to go about nerfing them because it'd potentially affect autarky usage (granted, you can go off of on hand but that'd be lootable). I'd also note that your point concerns whales; most players aren't whales, and the ratio you're citing remains virtually the same for today's C25's. Some could argue worse given the production changes from the great deflation, some could argue better due to gearing bonus and overall taller infra people sport nowadays (which leads to the improvement ratios you're talking about). I think that rolling back some of the other changes as a means of addressing turreting (assuming that's the intent) would make more sense than trying to affect their usage altogether by increasing resource costs. Which of course, doesn't even delve into the fact that back then, you could only build 1 nuke and 1 missile, whereas now you can very realistically build 3 missiles, and 2 nukes if you're really dedicated to the gig (or are a whale where the project makes more sense given the costs of your cities).

Those alliances would still dominate due to said numbers; it's simply a matter that it'd likely translate into an a more protracted (read:grindier) affair where... larger alliances would be able to leverage their WC's, let alone alliance banks. Nothing to say of milcoms and coordination on protracted wars (I'd favor the mainstays here). 3x would be net neutral for same city counts, nerf downdeclares and buff updeclares. Let's take C40 as an example. At the moment, it can be triple declared, whether by 3 C30's, 3 C40's, or 3 C50's. With 3x, it's still 3 C40's, while it's 4 C30's or 2 C50's (20 cities left of capacity which are likely unusable, and I'll touch upon this next). 2.5x would be 3 C30's or two C40's or C50's. The highest you could do is a C34 and two C33's (Yes, I'm aware you could do C40 and two C30's). From there, it's a leap where you are encouraged to downdeclare in order to make use of the spare capacity (you aren't going to throw a C20 alongside the C40's because that's suicide). This whole spare capacity/cap aspect is why I'm not a fan of the idea. It would generate odd incentives and frankly, serve to complicate planning in a fairly appreciable manner. And that's just as an as-is from being city count related. This ignores the specific multiplier (which I've already gone over).