Dio Brando

Peace is for losers. War often and well. Also, hello. Welcome to the game.

As far as I am aware, we're not in disagreement here(?). When writing that post, I was thinking of you in particular. Will be posting a thread on this topic in Orbis Central soon.

I’ve had some time to think about it a bit more. I posted my opinion earlier as well, which in essence was against the initial suggestion by Shifty. This one is more addressed to Alex’s proposed change: I really don’t agree with the idea that you need to kill alliance looting altogether, but I’m on the fence (leaning towards ‘No’) because it has its up’s and down’s. On one hand it encourages and promotes activity & coordination, which is good. On the other, historically we’ve seen people get looted when they’re on the losing side. Off the top of my head I can only remember one incident of *AA looting* that was done by the loser in that war (and not nation that was holding the bank getting looted), and even that amount was pretty much insignificant. Happened with Thalmor (then Terminus Est) beigeing Chaunce/Flame of the Flawed from The $yndicate, if I remember correctly. The game as it is should promote and encourage those who coordinate and strategise more than those who do not. As Scarf points out, risk taking isn’t something we should discourage either. That said, we’ve seen again and again that the sizeable looted found are because of an almost uncapped hard value (goes up to 33% of the bank if I remember correctly); the formula is % based (with a ‘small’ RNG factor) and the scenarios in which we see looting become a major issue are those of shell alliances/nations hosting the bank. Perhaps a tweak to the formula (in that the looting of a shell AA would still be damaging but not debilitating) might be better. That said, if the collective and Admin decide the mechanic isn’t necessary anymore, no big issue from me.

Honestly, sure. Go for it, abolish the system altogether. Reviewing it, I don't really mind it at all.

I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that you'd be screwed due to a change in the system. I was referring to the changes being played out in test / being proposed currently, in that we can probably put changes to the alliance looting function on the back-burner for now.

Personally don't think this is necessary. Allowing the looting of alliance banks when carelessness/inactivity/whatever comes into play is a good way of encouraging the opposite. What is not good is disabling the ability of players to prevent this altogether as Shifty's suggesting. I'm all for improving the system, but I don't think this should be anywhere near the consideration list right now. Also, question: How so?

I'll have what he's having.

No thanks. I don't agree with the premise in the first place. Allowing alliance banks - storing rebuild aid and war-chest infusions later on in war - to be looted is a one-way ticket to discouraging war even further. There are a few interesting ideas that can pop up due to this change, but it really is not worth it in the long run.

It’s a function of lack of time / other priorities than anything else, really. Also, I’m lazy when it comes to buying books. Otherwise, reading and writing are two of my favourite hobbies. Are you on Discord yet?

Only tWoK. Never got around to reading the others.

I enjoyed watching it, but I think you can produce something more appealing. Keep working on it. *pats*

This was bad, and you should feel bad.

Belated welcome to the game, Szeth. TKR is a fine alliance, and I'm glad you've found your way there... though with your name, could it have been any other place?

Be the Zannah to my Darth Bane. Except I kill you.

"MOOOM, WHERE ARE MY CHICKEN TENDIES IS MY WAR WITH PANTHEON" Like this?

To use your own words, 'if you learn to stop channeling your inner American and being lazy (and read)', there's a reason why I said, "coming off as". You obviously don't think everyone else is retarded, I obviously don't think that's the case, but please, feel free to be even more pedantic.

I think of myself as a tryhard but even I don't reach this much. Take a few deep breaths though, it'll be okay. *pats*

The point is that it wasn't like it was a well-kept secret... or a secret. It wasn't intended to be one either. A significant portion of the "active" playerbase knew what was going down.

This game is inherently conflict driven, so yes. If everyone started holding hands and singing kum ba ya, then user generated content that drives the IC dynamics forward (which is what a significant portion are here for) would pretty much end immediately. That said, there’s a fine line between being antagonistic, playing ‘the villain’ etc., and being a dumbass like Akuryo and coming off as a petulant child who thinks everyone but them is retarded. The latter isn’t fun for about anyone, it isn’t playing the villain, it isn’t making the meta any more interesting. (I will say this. They have done a spectacular job of pissing people off. It’s the means that I have an issue with.)

There's no love lost between FR and I, but this caught my eye. Do you not know what protectorate agreements are, or? Disliking the principle behind protectorate agreements is fine. Criticizing them on announcing a protectorate agreement is idiotic. Try again.

I don't know if it came off that way, but I'm not railing against @Prefontaine or anything. I respect his ability as a player - and a leader - greatly, but I've taken the discussion part of this subforum literally and am just pointing out things the way I see it. In all honesty, I think the game could use threads where we collectively work towards solutions and 'fixes', and this is a decent example of people suggesting changes and so on to benefit the community. As far as I can see, nukes and missiles don't really increase in strategic importance enough that you would actively use them as opposed to conventional military. In the same example that I was referencing earlier, there is no feasible way for even a team of 8 nations (5 offensive, 3 defensive) to use nukes/missiles in such a way as to drive a whale's infrastructure down to the point that they can defend against a massive military disadvantage. 8 wars, 8 nukes, 8 cities targeted, 12 MAPs each... to what end? The nation could easily rebuild a few hundred infra, get max planes, airstrike the living shit out of each of his 8 attackers, and continue. It's a battle of pure attrition, and I don't really find them all that much fun. Missiles would generally suffer from a similar issue. Infra is already immediately purchasable, and people do generally keep their's at a level where their military capacity isn't hurt too much. - I think what would be a more interesting tangent to explore is how the change would interact with destroying Improvements and the usefulness of Tactician / what tweaks we can make in that regard.

What started off as an attempt to diagnose and address inequalities within the attacker-defender dynamic ended up as a way to horribly imbalance the game, and shift the meta in so many ways that you would need half a dozen additional accompanying changes for it to make the least bit of sense. There is an ebb and flow to warfare. When a blitz occurs, the momentum of the effective offensive belligerents pushes forwards and is considered significant not simply due to its magnitude but that it occurs within a short period of time, but this very thing is only possible if coordination between the offensive party is present. If not, and you are most familiar with this, you end up with something like the notorious 2-man blitz. After the initial forward wave, if the defenders are not entirely outnumbered and there is still some possibility for forces 'in reserve' to engage in countering, you see a slow - but entirely noticeable - push back. Of-course it is not as rapid as the offensive, but can mitigate the first-strike advantage fairly well. If you are not able to scrounge up enough counters to make a significant push-back, you have either: Failed to secure your interests politically, in that you left yourself in a vulnerable position and were dogpiled by a force that wasn't necessarily updeclaring but fighting with a similar tier'ing, Failed to secure your interests mechanically, in that your alliance had poor control over your tier'ing and thus allowed the enemy to 'divide and conquer', Were declared on by a relatively higher-tiered force - or relatively lower-tiered force - and thus incapable of immediately mobilizing counters due to range immobility, Having said that, here are some thoughts: In your first point, you mention wanting a 'prepared' nation to be able to jump back into the fight immediately. I disagree with the premise of this idea in the first place. It is certainly true that nations on the receiving end of things tend to be worse off, but history has proven that with enough politicking and countering, you can shift the offensive war effort backwards. See introductory words. Prices will go up, but at what cost? @Shiho Nishizumi points out correctly that this would make economics far more important than it already is. What this does serve to do is encourage elitism, in that people will gravitate towards making their alliances tier upwards even further, and a natural reaction to this would be giving whales/economic powerhouses (in terms of income per member, not alliance income) a significant advantage. Here's a funny thought. I don't need to keep hangars or any other kind of military improvements anymore. I can invest those same x slots into resources, since I can easily shift to a full military build and max out all units within the span of 5 minutes. What that could do is increase resource production. The idea that this will promote coordination isn't quite true. In the current meta you can see 3 c15 nations declaring on one c22 nation and still coming out on top by coordinating. In the proposed system? You'd see three c15 nations declaring on the c22 nation, having the c22 nation over-ride all progress their coordination made by buying max planes, airstriking once, buying planes again, airstriking twice, buying planes again, and airstriking the third nation. Effectively, you'd be shifting war from, "Some coordination, mostly numbers" to, "Little coordination, some numbers, mostly stockpiles". Whales would be a 'bit' stronger? No, they'd be ridiculously over-powered. They'd be able to enjoy the most of their military free revenue, and as soon as they'd get a whiff of danger, would be able to arm up and roll everyone that stood in their way. You'd literally get Terminator Squads, and while that sounds 'cool', it isn't fun for anyone. Wars definitely will have more time in between. You're effectively eliminating 'Higher coordination, somewhat less numbers' strategies and replacing them with, 'Hoard away, and stack all tiers to your advantage. Gonna be a loooong war'. When you talk about war ranges and shifting them to max military potential, you're going to be introducing range immobility. Some alliances literally will be unable to fight others, and that's not fun, even if you think that encourages them to move upwards or downwards. There are many things I'm missing out, many things people have pointed out above. I just don't agree with the system. It boils down to people coordinating to get ahead of a numerically superior opponent and then getting all their effort erased because, hey, the higher city guy can just buy back whenever he wants. Others have proposed changes to make the war module more interesting, and while I don't mind them, I don't think it's in the interests of any game's retention rate to make the system needlessly complicated, especially if you're making it complicated to barely justify the addition of a previous change. At that stage, nations generally have anywhere from 2000 to 3000 infra. You'd need to get in a ridiculous amount of infra damage in before the whale actually suffers from any reasonable deduction in military buying capacity. Even if the attackers coordinate well enough and focus entirely on burning infra, the whale would likely have more than enough money to easily get infra back to a state where he could enjoy almost full military capacity.

Moving all nations to Rose.

Congratulations to the both of you!