Corvidae

I’ve written quite a few short essays on FA topics over the years but I think IA could be described as more important for the average member. I’ll dive right in. Most, if not all, alliances today have an internal attitude of minimalism and “Get what you give” as an unofficial slogan. Meaning that members may join but they won’t be funneled into anything more than a 100/100 growth bracket and a general chat. The active and inquisitive members will generally end up moving up and along, getting much more involved than the lurkers and usually move into gov at some point. I will state the obvious though, the hyperactive workhorses are rare. Much more often you have part-time players meaning they just won’t be in every random social call at 10pm on a weeknight. You only get anything out of the alliance if you give into it, like a manual water pump. I’m going to wax nostalgic for a bit here: I feel there is a lost art of curated experience within alliances. What does a curated experience look like? Well it can take whatever form you want, but the central idea is the same. Leadership puts effort into creating an alliance experience rather than just an alliance. For NPO that meant tiered systems of bureaucracy where you could join and climb the ranks of various government departments. For Arrgh it’s the experience of being a PnW pirate, and plundering the high seas. For GOONS it was trolling the heck out of everyone else. T$ is all about cranking out maximum returns. It can look similar or it can look completely different but you know it when you see it. It’s an alliance that all flows towards a goal, and that goal may never be attainable - Order, Profit, Fun, Ragebaiting, Honor, etc… but I think a lot of the existing alliances have lost their flavor and would benefit from remembering what it is that made them successful in the first place. A curated experience focused around whatever your community’s values are, funneling and directing members from day 1, I think really adds to the experience of being in an alliance.

Just to throw some actual feedback on your ideas instead of the glazing I've seen in the thread so far... This first idea goes against the stated design philosophy of the military research project and I think that's a huge problem with PnW development in general. We make a thing designed to do something, and then we change or add to it until it no longer accomplishes it's goal but instead contributes to an existing problem. Or the original design was flawed from the beginning and we never address the flaws. (City cost reduction projects for years come to mind.) Two pieces here: 1. Military Research should be a resource sink with a long ROI for the upper tier. The game has already run for a decade, think on that scale even if you doubt it'll make it another decade. To that end, I don't even think we need to buff the cost reduction, let alone add additional buffs. This is an unpopular opinion because it doesn't give people instant gratification, but it's mechanically the correct call. Making this into yet another thing that whales ROI from within a year will exacerbate the unbalanced economy that seems to bell-curve favor the largest nations. I also will say I think Military Research should be city-gated behind c40 and refunded to anyone who's bought it below that. Keep it as late-game content, we've seen time and again that high cost won't stop one-off cases from abusing mechanics like these. 2. Your third idea is reducing the amount of units in the game. Adding additional rebuy power seems to go directly against that idea of making wars cheaper. I personally think mil research is in a good place upon release. Super rare as far as PnW updates go. Everyone will disagree because there's something to gain from buffing it. I implore the people actually designing the game to recognize the difference between lobbying-for-benefit and actual feedback. I like the title of this idea but that's about it. 1. Right off the bat, your "gain" is based on beiging people, which is off-meta. If you want to incentivize wars economically, you have to figure out a way to do it within the meta or change the meta first imo. 2. Arbitrary war timers will create even more stagnation. What you want is engagement, content, and entertainment from your game. Wars are not the solution, they are one of the tools to achieve this. Wars about something are good. Wars about nothing are worse than peace. 3. I think this would just incentivize easier wars in whatever form that takes. Dogpiles, targeting smaller or inactive groups, etc. I can't really see major groups risking infra ROI for bonus resource production. I think this idea is trying to address the much lesser problem of Infra preservation, when really the much larger issue is tiering and city-chasing. I'm glad we're thinking in the direction of trying to fix stuff like this but this particular idea would cause more issues that it resolves. I think this is a cool idea and a novel way of approaching some issues we're seeing in the game. I do have some concerns: 1. If resource sinks are already an issue, this feels like worsening that problem. 2. How would this interact with and impact score and war ranges? You say it flattens it, could you elaborate or provide examples for what that means?

Wait, we're having another The Last Ride?

I love this even if it serves an interest. Actually, I love this especially because it serves an interest. The generation of “top” FA minds who decided that the post-Partisan forums weren’t worth using should really re-evaluate the impact of public FA on their success or failure. Nice post.

Upvoted because you posted on the forums but terrible news tbh. I hate hearing people retiring completely out of the game. Hope everything is okay for him irl. SIN is seeing some monumental gov shift-arounds and big FA policy changes so I just want to take a moment to say even as a sometimes-critic: I appreciate y'all's role in this game.

There comes along people who burn bright but brief, who change the game around them and break norms. Hatebi didn’t care about loot in the traditional sense, didn’t chase the cash looted leaderboard spot, she just wanted to see infra burn and enjoy the community. Truly will go down as one of the greats. O7 Hatebi

Super simple suggestion to give a rework and flavor, with minimal coding effort (so maybe there's a chance) while balancing out econ a bit better. Laws and Policies Overview: The general idea is to customize the current feel of your nation. Like real life, laws are not permanent and static. They can change with need and the best part is that this suggestion is a Foundation suggestion, meaning it can be built upon in future updates to provide even more content. Broad Categories Citizenship Full citizenship for any who desire it: +10% population per city, +5% crime per city Naturalization process, earned after requirements are met: +5% population per city, +5% commerce per city Restricted Citizenship: -10% population per city, -5% crime per city Economics Laissez Faire: +10% commerce, +5% pollution, +2% crime Mixed Economy: +5% commerce, +2% pollution, +1% crime Command Economy: -5% commerce, -5% pollution, -2% crime Manufacturing Regulation Deregulate Industry: +10% output of Manufacturing improvements, +5% pollution Light restrictions: +5% output of Manu, +3% pollution Heavy restriction: -10% manu output, -5% pollution Environmental Protections Exploit the Earth: +10% raw improvement output (includes farms), +5% pollution, +2% disease Mixed regulation: +5% raw improvement output, +3% pollution, +1% disease Treehugger: -10% raw output, -5% pollution, -2% disease Military readiness Si pacem, para Bellum: -10% military recruitment cost and upkeep, -10% commerce, -10% resource output, +5% battle effectiveness of all units Prepare but don't panic: -5% military cost and upkeep, -5% commerce, -5% output, +2.5% battle effectiveness of all units Trust in Diplomacy: +10% military recruitment cost and upkeep, +10% commerce and resource output, -5% battle effectiveness of units Pretty straight forward, no new feature per se just buttons that give modifiers. Mixable and matchable for various builds of producers, raiders, farmers, war-time bonuses, etc. Just adds a layer of thought to put into the game.

In my opinion, the FA hierarchy has obsessed over NAPs for far too long as the perfect tool to ensure their 400 IQ 4D chess plans go perfectly. In most instances, with the only exception being Eclipse, NAPs have been bad for almost every alliance in the game since 2020 (NPOLT) either negatively impacting activity to a point of internal collapse (Rose from almost 2 years of peace at one point) or just outright being a poor political move that saw them lose successive wars (Grumpy, TKR, T$, etc.) The benefit they provide already exists via the end of the war, most sane groups don't sacrifice rebuild or member interest to hash out the same fight right after ending it. NAPs should not only stop being a "norm", this move should be cheered as something different rather than the world police sticking their nose up Epi's metaphorical behind about it. I definitely appreciate Shwin's walls of text and effort to make this into a political issue as I found it interesting and has motivated a lot of posts... but it's really a Camelot vs. TFP issue, and Camelot's allies have already cut ties as a result. TFP's allies should wake up and react if it's a further problem from there (As the Rose coalition was the party with whom the NAP was signed). I guarantee that if any major violated a NAP, the "punishment" would only be the result of political convenience or no punishment would happen at all. Camelot's only in danger of "punishment" due to their relative isolation and weak FA position -- which they've had for awhile now. Aside from my anti-NAP rhetoric in general: Sketchy and Vexz have been the loudest voices against Epi during this whole debate in RON, and to that I say: Enforce the norm if you believe it so strongly. It was your (Rose's) NAP that got violated anyway. I wouldn't fault Rose for defending an ally or defending their peace terms if they truly believe the NAP was violated. I wouldn't fault Singularity for defending their ideological stances. Asking the community to perma-roll Camelot together is definitely overkill though. End of day: You won't see meaningful politics for the sake of politics without meaningful changes to the economic system. Any given alliance has to save up for ever-more percentages of the year just to stay or become relevant. Cities need a hard-cap just as a short-term solution, then a new system needs to be rolled out. The game isn't dying or collapsing due to some unseen force of entropy, we're just ten years into a game that didn't have an end-game designed.

Update: They did not

Shwin made his case on RON for some reason instead of the proper medium. I'm just reposting it here.

Yeah that's my understanding as well.

Stay in touch piggy. ❤️

Honestly I did not expect such a solid argument from your side Epi, and I'll be honest I'm leaning towards agreeing the NAP was nullified by Rose's proxy actions. Do NAP-breaking things, expect NAP-breaking surprises I guess. I understand TFP was the target of Arrgh and I don't begrudge you wanting to go raiding if you're broke but I do echo other's wondering why you hit TFP instead of Rose? It seems like all your frustration is directed at them and TFP is more of a supporting actor.

This has got to be one of the best things on the forums, if not the best, since probably 2020 or earlier. Love the whole thing.

Why so far out? I'm down though.

For team First Contact

"I will pay you to play AoE4 with me"

Not to deride a peace agreement but referencing the posting here, you guys fought for exactly 30 days and signed into a Non-Aggression pact for four months. Locking up 1/4th of the [active] game into a NAP for a third of the year from less-than-a-month of fighting is cowardly and frankly plays more into Rose's hands than the alleged victor's. I know people rarely care, especially gov who are ditching the game anyway, but it's sad to see careless peace deals like these. NAPs set the stage for stagnant politics by removing potential coalitions or partnerships within specific windows, it takes the dynamism out of the game and creates an environment where your incentive to fight a war is not in an interesting CB but rather in the end result of guaranteed safe growth for X months. Here's the kicker though: Safely growing in perpetuity is killing this game, the same way the lack of updates coming from the dev team are. Congrats on an interesting war bookended by a poorly-thought peace deal.

Hey so I saw you used this image, unfortunately it is under copyright protection by Kyu and you will be executed for this transgression. Congrats on forming and good luck.

Finally, a good f**king theme

This post is my personal try-hard roadmap if I were Alex: It's time to re-analyze the design philosophy of the team. By the end of April, devs need to agree on a few things: 1. Wars will no longer prevent rollouts. If that looks like rolling out mid-war, so be it. If that looks like a global forced period of peace, so be it. If you can find another solution, great. The development cycle should not lean on player wars as an excuse. Ideally this would mean establishing a release date for updates so the players can plan around it. 2. Establish and stick to a pipeline: Pick an idea, work on it, send it on the coders, test it, implement it. Get a pipeline flowing. Every quarter should have an update which includes bug fixes, UI improvements, and new content for players both old and new. It doesn't have to be a massive World-of-Warcraft-esque expansion pack, but every quarter should have those three things as a minimum and never miss a release. Reliability and accountability are key pieces to growing your game instead of watching it wither away. Thirdly, utilize your resources on-hand: The QoL improvements threads is still pinned to the top of the suggestions subforum. Start going through and picking some for each quarter. Fourth, even though the numbers are controversial, the city cost change was long coming. It modernizes and future-proofs the game in a way that we haven't yet seen with any other mechanic. Take that philosophy forward with the bones of the game. Referral bonuses on a sliding scale, credit redemption amount on a sliding scale, get the foundations of the game all on the same page. Now after that work is done, start skimming for new content ideas. Someone complained in Discord that suggestions aren't detailed enough anymore. Here are a handful of examples just from me in the past few months that got ignored. You don't need to pull them directly but perhaps they could give some inspiration: There are a lot more in the suggestions subforum, you just have to skim through titles and see what strikes your fancy. Again: I don't care what we do next. What we need is a reliable development cycle that can generate interest in the game, like every other modern multiplayer game does.

As the old adage goes: Pride cometh before the fall. Congrats on peace, I doubt anyone learned anything.

You do realize that EVH got hit right? This argument isn't in the hypothetical vacuum of "well maybe TGH will hit us if we don't do this." This is the head of TGH FA/current leader telling EVH leadership that he will cover for them if they get into a conflict and then in the same message paints TI as a perfect target. The gun definitely existed and it was fired multiple times, to continue with your metaphor.

Better than Buo shifting the blame of the CB onto Rose... his ally who also got hit for it💀

Sketchy told me this was an unjust war