Corvidae

With 2 out of every 3 suggestions being a new project, we need to re-examine how project slots function if that's going to be a primary mode of nation customization. 5-10 slots for the average nation doesn't offer a ton of freedom especially considering that several projects are "essential" to functioning in PnW. I have a few perspectives on this: 1. Classify certain projects as "Essential" and these cost 0 slots to purchase. These can be viewed as flat nation upgrades rather than nation customization slots. My personal suggested list would be the Intelligence Agency, Propaganda Bureau, Space Program, Center for Civil Engineering, Moon Landing, and maybe the two Urban Planning projects. Effectively all of these are firmly in the "need" category of projects rather than a "customization" category. 2. Tie project slots into different things other than infra. 5000 infra earns a project slot, 5 cities earns a project slot, 100 wars fought earns a project slot, maybe even certain achievements can earn a project slot. This would allow for a certain retention of project slots as well even if infra is shed, which I think helps further customization. 3. Allow project "swapping." You buy a project once and can choose when to equip, unequip, or re-equip it. Basically "unlocking" the project instead of paying for it multiple times. 4. Rework Pirate Economy into something useful and nerf the iron dome/VDS.

I saw this, but then also saw "leaks" showing that people had pulled the amounts of resources Arrgh had in its bank... So how is that not a security issue?

I don't run any bot-related, nor have I ever shared my API key. Yet I've pulled 13 requests today? Sup with this @Alex

That's not Krampus...

Arrgh will be joining the Swamp after our war ends as well. Just announcing it now so no one gets surprised.

dude activated a 1000-nation MD clause after agreeing to white peace the raids/counters/escalations.

This is the theme of the whole war so far.

If you want people to trust you then by trustworthy. Stabbing in the back and trying to claim innocence is honestly the dumbest tactic you could choose here given the war screen is literally public to anyone looking. You guys are still in the DM saying Swamp got called in on their MD clauses because "the news servers said Arrgh was the aggressor."

Is it only 7? So not only does Ampersand declare a very personal crusade on Arrgh, but you can't even fight it yourselves? The Federation has an entire page of offensive wars on us right now. I think even TFP got in more than 7.

Alexio has been beating his chest for days, ordering allies to join in, and has been continually moving goalposts while simultaneously filling defensive slots. Notice our "agreement" (Murtaza asking people to chill) was almost a week ago. Notice how many aggressive wars have been declared in that time. This is all a ruse to attack yet another small group with the Swamp Zergswarm. Just like TEst and TCW experienced recently. Particularly annoying because I don't mind war, but I mind wasting time in a "negotiation" designed to obfuscate an aggressive war.

After dozens of aggressive wars, calling in an entire bloc to defend Ampersand from a single raid, and being Underlord-levels of annoying in a group DM (sorry Under ❤️ ) - Arrgh has finally lost the inclination to listen to Alexio whine. I look forward to seeing 800 infra nations in my defensive slots. Arrgh!

It's already scheduled in one of the upcoming updates.

VDS is unironically better than Pirate Econ, in my opinion.

With recent score changes, people are sitting in a "tighter" range. Lower city counts in your war range often have very high military. High city counts in your range often have less (but can out-buy you). There really isn't the presence of the old "golden range" of people who have low military AND are lower city count than you anymore. So no, a single buy offsetting it has very little to do with MMR or bad luck these days. With score ranges being so much tighter with the recent update, you're almost always fighting someone with the capability to fight back. The combination of buying a full compliment of soldiers/tanks for the day is almost always enough to flip a raid in my experience. It's simply the cost of doing so that presents the harder choice. That is a good gameplay element called a strategic tradeoff. Sit back and get raided or spend resources for military. Double-buying has its own strategic tradeoffs for a higher payout. I'm not sure how to word this properly so don't roast me if I get this wrong: I agree resource costs should be balanced like any other mechanical part of the game, nothing should be prohibitively expensive or "not worth it"... I think you're taking it too far to call it an incentive though. I agree raiding and "real" warfare is different though, a point I'm trying to make here with these changes to soldiers. Staying power in soldiers is a good thing, for the reasons I've listed above and in other posts. There is no one launching global wars thinking about the soldiers on the other nations. They are a supplemental unit, at best, to tanks for most people. They are a vital unit for raiding. Nerfing soldiers will hurt a subset of the game's population without benefiting balance or other players experience.

Without trying to be rude, why is that a problem? From my perspective: 1. Soldiers don't win wars. You can achieve effective ground control on people relying mostly on soldiers very easily with a single daily rebuy or doublebuy of soldiers & tanks. I know this as a pirate, most people know it as counters. It takes very minimal coordination to ruin someone's ground control, the only barrier is tank cost (which literally just got cut in half in the last update.) and cost is a part of war. That's called a strategic decision - spend the resources to flip the ground war or save the steel. That is a good piece of gameplay. Leading me to... 2. Wars should be a resource sink. As unpleasant as it sounds, resource efficiency is not the first consideration in war balancing. Airplanes should have a cost to use, wars shouldn't be exceedingly cheap. The economy of the game already struggles with resource/cash sinks as-is. We can agree to disagree on economics but the bottom line is that military units, casualty rates, and warfare needs to be balanced within itself as a priority. Resource efficiency is a secondary thought, at best. 3. These changes disproportionately target raiders. Soldiers aren't a very "meta" unit. They're primarily utilized to bolster tanks in normal warfare. Tank count and plane count, even arguably ship count, are all much more important in warfare than soldier count. These changes seem to be actively targeting raiders because people are upset planes-only isn't enough to defend themselves with. See point 1 for why this isn't even true. Soldiers already net-die quickly enough to zero someone in a single round of wars, just like any other unit right now. It's disingenuous to try and mask an attack on raiders as an argument for better resource efficiency or worry about soldiers somehow being too strong when the same people are literally calling them "meat shield units." Sorry if this isn't the most eloquent post, but I hope this gets my points across. At the end of the day, this feels like a spiteful addition due to Mythic's recent raid on Yarr. Changing soldiers only truly harms one group, the rest of the game may not even notice. I feel like affecting a group's gameplay experience negatively to a complete lack of benefit to anyone else is selfish and stupid.

Just to echo because my post might've gotten lost in the sauce: Please do not increase casualty rates of soldiers from any source. They die fast enough and are countered easily enough with tanks.

I personally don't think ground units need to take any additional casualties from any source other than planes versus tanks. All these buffs to killing soldiers seems like it would disproportionately harm raiders and literally do nothing to the overall war system for everyone else. Ships probably need more than a 10% bump, they are incredibly bad right now. My navy can't hit another boat to save their lives. Otherwise the big numbers in this post like 40% boost to planes vs tanks or 40% reduction in planes vs tanks should probably be toned down. 40% nerfs/buffs usually just lead to a correction down the line... again. New Project name: Manifest Destiny. We've run a lot of scenarios on the dev team with spy casualties specifically. The spy satellite has been a massive thorn in the side of the discussion on how to balance them. The tl;dr is that even without the spy satellite, spy v. spy attacks can either completely zero or near-zero an enemy's spy count in a single day change. As I'm sure everyone knows. The spy satellite can effectively make it so you can lose your entire (effective or literal) spy count in a single barrage of attacks. The whole mechanic is wildly broken. That being said, I think most of us agree that spy satellites should simply be refunded for those who bought it. As it is a very expensive project and those who bought it did so under the impression it was stupidly OP.

Have fun getting rolled and no loot.

You are all allowed to say what you mean to say: Pirate Economy is a trash project. No one cares if you can raid an extra slot at c3, No one wants an extra slot at c10 or higher. 20% more income doesn't matter at c3, you're not there for the income if you're camping in the bottom tier. The benefit of an extra slot is the ability to cast your net wide, but by the time you're not in the single-digit city count you need to refine your strategy or get rolled every time you go declare 6 raids and receive 3 counters. Arrgh doesn't avoid it because of infra costs, Arrgh avoids it because it's objectively bad. Any other military project is better than Pirate Economy right now, even for a pirate.

This is an extremely important announcement from your favorite pirate alliance. We’ve been the subject of a brutal hacking campaign carried out, likely, by the Syndicate. They’ve targeted us where it hurts the most, out of pure jealously that we are the masters of the Caribbean and their Nassau Office is a rental leased to them by Ripper. The YouTube video featuring Arrgh’s former alliance anthem was taken down resulting in a new anthem being chosen. Behold the new beauty of our alliance anthem: Though the jealous Syndicate tried to break our spirit, we preserved and came through this incident stronger than ever. I’ve spoken to Ripper and we’re definitely raising rent in Nassau as revenge. Thank you for your time. Arrgh!

I'm surprised at the amount of love / lack of hate in this thread. I guess Camelot really is about to get rolled.

Bump. I know the admin team has drifted away from these small tweaks in favor of a new, more complicated, more controversial idea... but I’m just going to continue lobbying for this anyway. This is an extremely popular suggestion that shouldn’t get lost to the depths of the forum.

I’m just saying it’s been announced several times as an upcoming update. I’m not the one coding it though so I don’t have the exact ETA.

When are you guys signing Obsidian Order 2