Shiho Nishizumi

ITT: "I'm too lazy/incompetent to properly moderate (and too cheap to hire someone else to do the job for me), so I'm knee jerk removing a fundamental war mechanic without bringing an alternative replacement in it's stead.".

Plus review bombing and falsely accusing the admin of protecting a ring of pedophiles, fascists etc in an effort to directly damage the game itself, once they couldn't "win" it. But yes. "Befehl ist befehl" doesn't fly at that point.

I never said it wasn't a thing. I said that changes like these would make that the go-to strategy. And why that would be a bad idea. The latter is counter intuitive yes, but there's no better alternative if we're to be frank. Changing it would either require removing beige so to incentivize defeating foes, which leads to a far worse situation (nigh impossibility to rebound), which would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease; the alternative is some convoluted system (such as the one where winning led to having a higher army cap but lower recruitment rate, and vice versa), which I don't trust Alex to be able to implement without inadvertently adding a ton of bugs, and which I don't trust him to know how to tweak properly (especially if the last update is anything to go by). Your proposal about nukes is less so a step in the right direction (which it isn't, due to reasons I elaborated in two different posts, and you largely ignored), and more so going from 0 to 100. No. They'd make for a better strategy than conventional because they'd be able to inflict far more damage (and more importantly, damage which can't be inflicted by them [that being disabling cities]) than conventional military would be able to, and would therefore make the latter obsolete. It'd require an absurd increase in the cost of the nukes for it to keep them from being mass utilized. As for the argument that knocking out cities would drop them to hit smaller people; for one thing, NRF would be a highly desirable project under such a context, and it'd lead to it being acquired a lot more throughout the tiers. Secondly, city count is irrelevant for the purposes of nuke turreting. Thirdly, if both sides are turreting, they'd be dragging each other down. As Hime elaborated, nukes have a valid role under the current meta. It's mainly a matter of people not realizing those other uses. Other than perhaps killing some extra improvements, they're in a fine position balance-wise, and don't really need any adjusting. Especially not to the extent you're suggesting.

After (or rather, during) the interview with Alex last Sunday.

Yea, no surprise you can't nuke a low infra city and walk away with a profit. Do you want to be able to naval 1000 infra with 300 ships and walk out with a positive too? All attacks have a threshold where if you dip below it, the economic damage you inflict upon a foe is lesser than what it cost you to do that attack in the first place. This isn't a bad thing (given proper balance, and not some stuff you see going on currently. E.G: Naval casualties). And if it were to be an issue (which it's not, for reasons I'll elaborate below), the sensible approach would be to simply reduce the cost of nukes, and not make them doomsday devices as OP suggested. It's also a good thing that they're a bit on the pricier end. For one thing, it makes it so that they don't completely render missiles obsolete, given that most people view them (and do indeed treat them) as a step up from missiles. Especially given that ID's are often built due to their inexpensiveness and good enough reliability at what they do. This is in contrast with VDS', which are substantially more expensive and less reliable at what they do, and thus aren't built as often as ID's. Secondly; yes, nukes (and to a lesser extent, missiles), should be more expensive to use relative to conventional attacks, in regards to value destroyed in contrast to resources spent. For one thing, conventional attacks require you to have said unit to inflict damage with, which is a higher upfront cost compared to that of one-off weapons. Secondly, that military often has to face off other military in order to do their attacks, incurring further losses on themselves, and mitigating the damage they do in turn. Missiles/Nukes have none of these considerations when you're using them. The only ones they have is whether the other guy has an ID or VDS, and whether the infra you're killing is valued more than the ordnance you're using. Given all the above (plus guaranteed improvement killing, and radiation for nukes, and selective improvement killing for missiles), it is a fair trade off that you have to consider whether using one is economically viable or not. Especially since, again, this is a consideration for all attacks. And as a final note regarding that, as it's worth mentioning; the threshold is relatively high at the moment due to the inflated nature of the current market. Usually, it'd be at least a couple hundred infra lower. That threshold is also not that big of a problem given the current situation, since a lot of people stacked infra higher than they otherwise would, due to the duration of the NAP. So it really balances itself out in that regard. I know exactly how and when nukes are used. To the point where I elaborated exactly on how and when to use them on internal guides (which I reckon is more than what 95% of the alliances out there write about them, which would be "don't use unless you're losing and want to shred some infra"). In fact, and just as an example, you can use nukes as a way to get rid of a would-be pinner, and allow yourself to use your beige time to build stuff (either conventional military, or nukes/missiles to turret more). I've myself used nukes for that exact purpose, and to do either or of the listed (usually both at the same time) several times last war. It wouldn't be done overnight. Obviously not. But wars aren't over overnight either. They go on for weeks, if not for a month or two. Which is ample enough time to get the volume necessary for what I mentioned. Never mind if you already have a stockpile built up prior to a war. And because I think you didn't actually realize it; that snippet you quoted was elaborating based on the the functionality OP suggested they should have, rather than the functionality they currently have. I wouldn't mind them killing more improvements, as was suggested above. But the focus of my text was why the OP's suggestion was a bad suggestion, rather than a comment on how to rebalance nukes. Resources are, in fact, finite; even for top 50 alliances. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of those AA's don't tax their members 100/100 (which is what you seem to be alluding to) constantly (if at all), or necessarily even have a high tax rate to begin with. So those AA's are neither gathering the amount of revenue you seemingly think the do, nor do they have the amount of resources to sustain those PLUS all of the stuff that's been added. There's a reason why you, for example, don't see those AA's spamming Spy Satellites, Advanced/City Planning, or cities outright, in spite of the desirability of all of those.

This would just lead to people nuke turreting each other, as that'd be a lot more effective than fighting conventional wars. If you're destroying 9/10ths of the city's imps, you're invariably also destroying any max capacity mil in there. The remaining mil is unusable due to the city being disabled. As such, there'd be no point in using anything else at all, given that a nuke would materially or effectively wipe them out anyways. It's simply bad game design if you can undo the substantial amount of effort and coordination that goes into winning conventional wars by engaging in a style that's not much more than just click a button to buy the nuke, and another to launch it. As for long wars; that issue is a political one, not a mechanical one. Furthermore, the recent changes, whether for good or bad, are already going to make wars more resource-intensive to wage. So I think that you're overlooking the impact that update is going to have by wanting YET ANOTHER (on top of the several that have been added by this point) resource sink to be added. And no, there's no reason why nukes should be overpowered. Ideally, nothing should be overpowered, as the main concern in games is to have good balance between the different units/tools at hand. The priorities in games are balance because ultimately, that's what leads to an enjoyable game experience; not realism to a fault. Especially not when "realism" has been forfeited several times by now in this game.

Reps aren't something people are going to readily accept by default. Have them be 11 figures sums halfway to being 12, accompanied by further economically punitive terms (thunderdome, for example) that makes it extremely obvious that the aim was to throughout bankrupt the other side, and it's no surprise that people weren't about to accept them.

It wasn't working. I had filed a ticket over it, and even SS'd before and after the AS to show that no ships had died. Infra and plane casualties were being registered. Ships weren't.

@Alexhas this been addressed?

It's pointless to devote a certain amount of time and effort into a feature that isn't expected to see much, if any use, in contrast to devoting that that same amount of time and effort into more significant/worthwhile updates, such as the recent update and the Alliance QoL thing. It's simply a matter of investment vs return, and the latter options offer far better returns for the investment involved. As such, I'd be encouraging a greater emphasis to be placed on the latter two. This is inconsequential enough to where it could very well just be added directly as changes to the improvements themselves. Which would allow far more people to make use of them if they were so inclined.

You couldn't pin down someone forever on the old system either, due to the resistance mechanic. If it was possible to forever pin someone,, the last war wouldn't have gone for eight months for the simple reason that there wouldn't have been a way to present any resistance. It's not anyone's problem that you were simply ignorant to this fact. No, it wasn't. And yes, hitting people with less cities when 0'd yourself was a valid strategy; note that you yourself were 0'd, and the other person had military; often maxed to even be in range in the first place (the alternative being ridiculously padded with infra, in which case that's their fault). And as soon as you bought military yourself, you put yourself in range of larger people that they themselves had military to put you down. It's nowhere near as a foolproof and unbalanced matter as you're making it sound, and wasn't too difficult to respond/address if the defender's milcom was reasonably competent, and the counters did their due diligence. That your response's substance is "well let's gut this entirely (and frick up other things as well) because it was a circumstantial issue at best" exemplifies the approach taken, and the disastrous result thereof. Clearly you yourself were not, given that you failed to notice all the other issues Justin and myself highlighted. And if you were, it shows your ignorance in regards to the war system; which is unsurprising, as you haven't seriously fought since 2018, when you sent your AA to die in a futile banzai spearhead.

Your armchair theory doesn't hold water, when compared with the results at hand (as hinted by Justin). And they certainly will not in an actual war context, when you have the target itself counter attacking and rebuying, counters coming in, etc etc. You focused on a singular problem, and chose to smack it with a hammer irrespective of how the cracks affected the entire structure. Just as an example, wars being way grindier and resource intensive (in part because costs such as gas/muns usage weren't altered), means that upstarts/new players will have a much harder time competing with old alliances, due to the simple fact that the latter have had more time to stockpile. And these fights will be fights of attrition for the simple reason that you can't really zero someone, let alone pin them, if they have the resources to spend. Wars being these resource intensive also dissuade alliances from warring in the first place, as there's much more at stake. All of this contributes towards stagnancy. And if you do get 0'd because you went broke on, example, steel; you can't even fight back anywhere near as well as you could under the old system, due to cities being the main NS contributor. You'll be in range of people with similar city counts as you, who are nonetheless maxed (provided similar infra counts). So congratulations on stripping those people from any tools for fighting back, other than nuke turreting. Were these factors considered at all? No. Again, that GC still limits the amount of aircraft deployed, that Air Superiority has no effect, tank K:D being 1:1 on IT's; all of these are indications that barely if any testing at all was done (because otherwise, people would've spotted it and told Alex about it), and most likely you lot just did some maths, went like "Yep, this checks out", and went with that; and failed to implement it properly while at that. Again, this sort of stuff doesn't work because you completely ignored a ton of circumstantial factors that simply can't be mathed (or simulated properly on test server, for that matter). Oh and as a little aside; on top of what Durmij said, it also takes effort to properly plan and pull off a good blitz. It's only natural for a substantial advantage to be the trade off for both the cost and effort involved in it.

The past two globals are case example of it not being such. NPOLT I needn't elaborate. Surf's Up largely came down to how NR et all hit. If they had hit the overextended people rather than easy pads, that war would've not gone the way it did. But yes, this is Alex coming up with 50000 different changes that addressed XYZ complaints (many of which were very specific/situational) that he couldn't be fricked to test (as is becoming increasingly apparent to me), either individually or as a bundle, and pushed to go live haphazardly for no good reason other than to claim he's doing something. I suppose that having a huge changelog looks more impressive than having just one or two lines.

Aircraft casualties from these GA's are also not listed on the war timeline, or statistics. Also... https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=656061 Nice update @Alex. Totes not half baked.

Naturally, the guy who was party to losing 1/2 billion to a single raider thinks that this is good.

I told it to Frawley back in the day when he made the realism argument, and I'll tell it to you now. Arguing based on real life logic is asinine, when you have so many factors in this game that throw realism right out of the window. Such as being able to basically double your population overnight, loot being able to be delivered through a blockade via a beige you got with a missile/nuke (even if you had no other conventional force whatsoever), being able to play baseball with nations on opposing warring alliances through blockades, etc. Does realism only matter for X but not for Y? Make up your mind. Furthermore, real life is very often inherently unbalanced. It is preferable to have as many stacked advantages as possible. For instance, one of the changes you made here was to make tiering more rigid by inflating city NS and devaluating military score. The purpose of this, per you, was to minimize the amount of ludicrous downdeclares which led to an unbalanced match up due to the downdeclaring nation potentially having a greater than 2:1 ratio in city count, compared to the defender. All well and good. That sure as shit doesn't make any real life sense. Do you think that, for instance, the Soviets cared that they outnumbered the Finnish by magnitudes of hundreds, specifically in terms of materiel such as tanks and aircraft (the former, ironically enough, being one of the main things that inflated NS previous to the changes)? Of course not. They rolled into Finland anyways, because that's what "real life sense" actually is. It's about making things as unbalanced as possible in order to gain as much of an advantage as possible. The focus gameplay should be one of making things actually balanced, rather than try to justify them on "real life sense"/realism. The latter can be a thing if it enhances it, rather than just be added for the sake of it. Rather than implementing various small changes to see how things changed, you simply read "Planes OP" and "Tanks UP" and went balls to the wall with nerfing one and buffing the other, not caring for how these interacted in conjunction. That's not how balancing should be done. It should be done by taking baby steps to see how it affects the overall dynamic. Honestly, it's possible that it'd have been mostly fine if you had just made it so that tanks could kill planes per GA (albeit not at these rates). But the way you implemented it, you just threw it the opposite direction. The silver lining is that there's still a fair bit of time to test things out in order to balance it properly.

Just name it League of Nations, since it'd be about as effective as the real thing.

"Get off of alum so there's less of a supply so I can make more money from my production."

https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=630723 cost the defender 38.6m in unit value, the attacker 18.86m. Not including soldiers (which is roughly comparable) and looted cash (which favors the defender). Price of steel being at 4046 PPU and alum at 3506 PPU respectively. Theoretical infra lost (based from 2.1k infra since that's what the NS and his builds suggest) valued about 51m (no discounts) for the attacker. Defender lost some but I'll assume it's just like 5m or something of the sort. https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=630730 cost the defender 37.8m in that same value, while attacker lost 20.8m. Infra lost (based from 1990 infra based on same parameters) valued at 40m. Defender also didn't suffer that many losses in that respect. Doesn't include beige loot values. That also obviously adds extra. What were mathematically unsound trades (especially given the circumstances) are apparently fine trades now. Then again, I'm not surprised he'd think that when he thinks that bringing up the Test server is meant to mean anything.

Realism isn't an argument in a game where you can triple your population overnight, baseball through blockades, immediately strike someone on the opposite end of the world, etc. And you cite Iraq (because I presume Highway of Death). I can just cite Vietnam where the U.S. literally dropped thrice as much as they had dropped during WW2 on it's entirety, and yet still lost over 3k planes (not aircraft in total, just planes), 90% of those casualties coming from ground AA fire and SAM's (not present at all in game). Include all flying crafts and that goes up to the five digit range. With the N. Vietnamese themselves only losing low three digit aircraft counts. Aircraft in WW2 also displayed their limitation in instances like Iwo Jima, where the heavily dug in troops were able to out trade (in terms of casualties) their attackers which enjoyed a 3-1 advantage in terms of grunts, and near if not total air and naval supremacy. This isn't represented in game. Also, during the outset of the Battle of the Bulge, where weather (also not represented here) severely impaired their operational capacity. Not to mention the entirety of the Winter War, where the geography and dense forestry also limited their capabilities (too, not represented here). Rather than outright killing power, the main benefit from air power on tanks in those early instances, was one of psychological stress and disruption on the enemy organization. Both of these matter greatly in real life, but neither are a factor in game.

I'll use an example of many: If they had had good milcom, they would've recognized how overstretched we were early on and concentrated all their counters on one assault, and not sent them piecemeal for us to nearly use our daily buys on. NPO's entry was unnecessary had they played it right, and was needed solely due to their incompetence. Ofc a lot more than that, but that is just the starting point. That you seem to think otherwise, plus how "cheating is irrelevant" when GPWC is quite explicitly how they had the funds to drag the war double the length of KF (bans notwithstanding, and the bans only having punished one AA when the cheating benefitted their coalition as a whole), does tell me that you quite frankly don't know what the frick you're talking about. So I'll just disregard future posts on that basis. And yes, claiming meta (aka standard) on a war that was defined by unprecedented and extreme is simply dumb. Especially when the people who were largely responsible for how it turned out is gone.

Minimum is meant so that you can't get cycled in perpetuity due to going broke. It's not meant to give raiders a free pass for their loot. Production can be taxed 100/100 unless if beiged. Okay. I'll be blunt because apparently what I've said isn't getting through. You can't fricking pretend that this would've made a god damn difference in a war where the other side was fricking trying to exterminate you. And you can't fricking sustain a trade with a side that was cheating nearly a billion worth of resources per god damn day. >1/3 was good for perma blockades but actually isn't so it doesn't hurt to add anyways. Not an argument for adding it. The rest of what you've said is already done as is, with no infra pads being a thing to keep people in range. I also think that you overestimate the amount that was being looted towards the 2nd half of the war, the odd Polaris bank loot notwithstanding. At any rate, as I said: Arguing that it'll be the same as current is an argument for the current system, not the one you're arguing for. Since it doesn't make sense to make mechanical changes if an end result is the same. You're just wasting time and effort, and are at risk of implementing bugs. It doesn't even solve these issues. That you've opted to ignore what I've written, or side step it with unrelated matters, doesn't change that. The actual answer is that I'd have them not beige, and simply whack a mole their buy attempts until expiry.

>Permanent blockading. Minimum unlootable refined. >Getting rolled for months. I've literally addressed how this wouldn't have changed because it was a political factor, not a mechanical one. Especially when, you know, one side was cheating for more than half the duration of the war. >Not winning wars being a chore. You do realize that 1/3 means no leeway for beiging, correct? It'd also actually minimize the amount of looting you could via GA's do simply because you'd have to save the res and map's for the buys which are more substantial. >1/3 solves all. No it doesn't. Hell, if you're broke and blockaded, it doesn't matter whether you have a 1/6 buy, 1/3 buy or even 1/1 buy. You can't buy if you're broke.

Except it's not the meta. I also don't expect to see the 300 infra thing again.

1/3 buy was originally proposed as a way to mitigate/negate the whole beige shenanigans. Since you only would need two defeats as opposed to four to comfortably rebuild to max with 1/3. Well, the funds aren't there just for war, but also post-war. Having gone into a war with an AA bank empty, and fighting another war basically a month after, I've been there and done that about being broke after the fact. It's not an amusing prospect let's just say. That works if the group's comprised of huggers, really. And such a behavior is detrimental to themselves, because it basically reads as "Oh hey people can get free hits on us.". That's not a message you want to be sending off. And if it drags, there's always the argument of sure, group with infra is losing infra, but the group with no infra has no infra, and sometimes no production (if running an exclusively military build). This isn't a problem for people who're into raiding, but that group is just one of several that play this game. Things that aren't a factor for them are a factor for others. And if the argument is "Well, they may be trashed but they can always just raid/turret after getting trashed", the same is true with the current model.