Corvidae

I again will voice that I think these threads need time to cook before pushing to the test server and acting like they're polished. I hope you guys re-examine a lot of these changes and take a better game-design approach to things. Doubling the aluminum cost of planes isn't a good game design choice, maybe try increasing it by 10-20% first instead of doubling it. Ships removing superiority looks unbalanced as heck, but I agree it would be neat for ships to be battlefield control units: Maybe instead of removing superiorities they could provide buffs/maluses to offenses/defenses like a better version of Fortify. Military research looks interesting and the beige buff looks interesting.

Erm, for clarification is this the ship system currently on the test server preparing to go live? If it is, I think the total lack of feedback here is an indication that we may need to slow the roll and actually... get feedback. At a glance these two options alone will have sweeping impact on the war system. Rather than taking an axe to the problem, we could take a scalpel: Have ships provide bonuses or maluses to attacks/defenses so they can be battlefield control/support units.

Can you, for future threads, pin and link these "Official" threads please? Love all these proposals but probably will need to examine balancing closely on certain treasure bonuses mentioned. Love this idea but cap the number of templates each player can have before someone creates 999999999999999 and crashes the game. This is pretty bad and honestly screams of the old Rose and NPO tactics of trying to push or block game mechanic changes that would specifically benefit themselves. This game is not flooding with new players, and you need to consider your current playerbase instead of a mythical flood of new players. In this case I think you can appease both sets by simply reducing the cost of lower city counts and removing city timers up to the average, while leaving the cost of higher cities alone. Making it harder or more expensive to gain cities won't solve the core issue: The game isn't designed around such high city counts and it's disruptive to the overall economy and balance to have people growing that high. Address the mechanics that are poorly designed to accomodate the obvious end result of a decade-long nationsim rather than slapping a questionably-political bandaid fix onto the issue. Alex intended economic specialization years ago, why hasn't this been followed up on? Completely agree but I disagree that your solution will do anything other than give some temporary political advantage to the alliances currently lagging in the whale race. The cost of c43 isn't really what a new player is concerned about. We've hashed this conversation a million times on discord: New players don't quit because they feel too far behind, they quit because the game itself is dated and feature-poor. Something that the other changes (more treasures, colors, easier build templates) do actually address. The only people who stay are those who stumble into an alliance that they happen to click with. It's been years since the alliance recruitment page went up for example. Why isn't it pushed into people's faces that this is a social game? It's more of an inconvenience to new players because they're constantly spammed recruitment messages. The game itself should be plopping new players right onto alliance recruitment pages, with an explanation that PnW isn't meant to be played alone and that sandbox content is created by the community: PICK AN AA AND JOIN IT. Overall a much more solid post from the design team than usual but I downvoted it anyway bc Keegoz said it didn't matter.

Wait Sketchy can't have been mad at this, he's boycotting RON right? RONmanbad

Quick update: Peace was declared Tuesday. Rose still has 44 inactive nations (red or purple diamonds), with another 42 in VM. 82 nations are still on beige or grey. If Rose's inactives formed their own alliance, it would be the 12th largest AA in the game just two members shy of Camelot's spot at #11.

Did you get their autograph?

This was the closest a war ever came to the victorious party surrendering out of sheer boredom. I've been sitting with no offensive or defensive slots because the Eclipse Indian Army is sniping at 1am and all of Rose is inactive or in VM. Congrats on finally taking peace, to Rose's allies I hope you sincerely ask them why they took an extra month to accept a simple peace with no terms.

I agree on all points but I actually think you're missing the wider scope and implications behind your thought: PnW is dying. I don't think alliances have to be big to succeed, in fact I think most of the largest alliances in this game are objectively some of the worst at this game: Rose, TI, TFP (no offense Shwin), SIN (god I hate them), etc. People are migrating in larger numbers to mass members due to logistical capacity increasing, but only for the most high-effort and well-connected players: Locutus is not a substitute for the bots that most majors have access to. TSC has been using Locutus since inception and have been extremely grateful that we have any bot at all, but it's an esoteric mess that if I hadn't been using it for years I'd have no idea what I'm looking at for even basic commands. I also believe that as PnW dies, people seek out community more than they seek out anything gameplay-related. A strikingly small number of players care about winning or losing and most just want to barely pay attention to PnW while chatting on discord. Another point worth noting too: The culture shift of the game has moved away from big personalities starting new alliances, and more into joining established groups to try and take leadership roles there. Again this is yet another bad cultural phenomena we can blame on Rose for popularizing. I'd actually say for quite awhile it's been considered taboo to not poach for talent instead of growing it, but realistically this is a game and "growing" talent is probably 1 in 10,000 players. The real "homegrown talents" are just new players who already had IRL skillsets and personality matches ready to step into leadership roles like Canbec for TKR. Finally the most important point that pushes all of this: The game mechanics have stagnated significantly without major content updates and years of the Admin denying late-game content in favor of new player catch-up mechanics, which haven't even worked to catch new people up. New people are further behind that ever, old players are more bored than ever. Large alliances that offer exclusive communities are basically the only content left in the game, and I think most "elite" alliances have inactivity issues that pushes their members/new members away.

It seems your methodology has either become too esoteric or too propaganda-focused, good Borg. Either way I feel like you've attached a wholly separate dataset to "prove" whatever you're proving and chosen a very odd chart to post. Noting an increase of 0.20 average offensive wars per turn is pretty meaningless to most people other than "line went up." At which point, the graph is very much being used as the conclusion rather than simply presenting the data. I do agree with you on one of your main points though, most damage is done on round one. So why is Rose dragging things out? I guess we'll see tomorrow.

Just to establish the premise of this thread, the Immortals fought a very poor war the last time they found themselves at war. I was curious as to how Rose compared given the similarity of situations. This war has been going for about 44 days now, or roughly 6 weeks. That's (depending on cycling) 9-12 rounds of in-game wars. At the time of the linked post above, the conflict with TI had lasted 24 (5-8 rounds) days per the post. So writing off two extra days, I'm going to multiply some stats by 2 in order to compare it to Rose. Quick TI stats (ratio'd): 74% of TI was not fighting almost at all, less than one offensive war per round of war. 3.79 average offensives per member, again less than one offensive per round of war. TI would've had a total of ~1200 offensive wars after 44 days at war (hypothetically) 18 immortal nations had lost over half a billion in loot by this point, being by far the most looted AA in the war. TI inflicted 123B in damage by the end of the war, with a net of -$241B. That's not multiplied or adjusted, just what CTOWNED has for the entire war Quick Rose stats to compare 76% of Rose has less than one offensive (8 or fewer) per round of war. An average offensive count of 6 across the whole war for Rose. Even accounting each round for a maximum of 5 days, this is less than one offensive per round by a solid margin. Rose has 1529 offensive wars total per CTOWNED. 26 nations have been looted for half a billion or more. Rose currently has a net of -$277B, inflicting $130B in damages. So in almost twice the time, Rose has only inflicted $7B more in damages and taken $30B+ worse net. Quick VM/inactivity stats: I don't celebrate people going inactive, but I think it's important to include these because it often illustrates how dire of a situation an alliance is in. Rose has 37 members in VM, almost 14% of its massive alliance and more members than Guardian has total. Notably, only 3 of Rose's top 20 nations are active or not in VM. Additionally I count 66 nations (at time of posting) who are 7+ days inactive. So 103 nations total are either inactive or in VM, almost 45% of the entire alliance. Guardian has 12 people in VM (26% of the AA) and a further 3 inactive (40% of the AA). TGH has 8 in VM (15%) and a further 12 inactive (43% of the AA). A quick note though: Guardian has the most offensives per member in the war out of both coalitions, TGH not far behind. So while they are seemingly having some issues, the ratios look worse than the realities. Conclusion: I'm not sure why Rose isn't being much quicker to seek peace given the situation, and at a surface-level glance it seems like we might be seeing another Rose collapse akin to the old days of ParaCov where they lost a chunk of members and had to reorganize under Sketchy/Keegoz/etc. I'm not sure how a major power can recover from almost 50% inactivity rates during a war. It's troubling to see two large groups within the last two years go widely inactive from a losing war though, there are plenty of targets to turret and I write this post with the knowledge that my mostly-intact infra will be at risk as well. As always, this is just a game and I hate to see people quit over a loss. Especially people in the #1 alliance in the game for the past few years. Hopefully a quick and easy peace can be reached so that this war can be put behind Rose and her allies.

You* don't care about standards unless its your enemy breaking them. Don't speak for everyone.

I was going to type up my thoughts but I think you highlighted it for me. Either way I'm pleased to see Rose engaging on the forums for the first time in probably years outside of a post about Cake. Though some may deride public FA (really it's just PR), I think it takes courage to lay out your opinion for others to usually swarm as the game is very content-starved. Hope Rose is enjoying some activity, win or lose.

Rose is the number one alliance in score, arguably tiering, and total member count and has been for quite a long time. Far from victimized, Rose has seemingly benefitted the most out of all other alliances from the "system hand-crafted by Eclipse" that you claim. Curious. It is only now in a war where you've completely rolled over, have a small alliance's worth of people in VM, and lost 1/3rd of your score that you have sank to the lowest point Rose has seen in years... Rank 2. And yes I appreciate that an RoH got posted. Shoutout Vexz.

Arrgh! Happy birthday my beauties ❤️

this was an upvote until you said communism bad

The Sword Cats Coast officially made it to one year! 365 days of organized chaos, lots of fun, a war and some raids... TSC has run through a lot in our first year. Many said we wouldn't last, many said we had done it wrong, many said we should merge, we've been called a splinter, and my personal favorite was hearing individuals ask me "Is this a Roberts / Pubstomper / Logistics / etc. alliance?" and being truly unable to grasp a cooperative entity as all alliances should be run. For those who don't know yet, the alliance has a council-based leadership team comprising of 5 people. This was the first among many things we chose to do differently and see what worked for us. TSC has risen to a steady spot in the top 20, about 300k score within our first year. Special shout out to some of the people who made TSC possible: Pubstomper AKA Umar -- the original DM of "Hey we've never been in an alliance together" set this all in motion. His commitment to community inspired this whole thing. Logistics -- Whose passion for success has driven TSC to heights unimagined when we started in 2023. Yirmi -- Whose level head calmed the more passionate voices and really helped bridge the gap of the early months Hunter -- For bringing spirits up by drinking spirits down and guiding milcom for our first year Dream and Sol -- Whose hard work and dedication to econ has put us on the map in terms of tiering and growth Merow and Parapet -- For being the silent workhorses of milcom and really holding us up in our first war when real life reared its head for many of the other leaders Victor -- For believing and selflessly supporting the dream, stepping in anywhere he was asked and giving way for new blood to flourish. LeftBehind, Aero, Cypher -- For really pulling together our FA efforts into a coherent team, one of which has already moved into a current leadership role John Christ -- The best damn recruiter that we've ever seen Ronjoy, Hana, and our art team for creating amazing graphics! Special thanks to Singularity for protecting us in the beginning and being understanding in tricky circumstances, and special thanks to TKR and Grumpy for being faithful allies and blocmates. And honestly so many other people that I could fill this entire post up with how proud I am of TSC. This really has been a collaborative effort of many people making many contributions, I'm really excited to see how this continues from here and I hope to be here posting something similar in 2025.

I, for one, am surprised. I thought for sure this was going to be a meme way of declaring Camelot the winner.

The minister of comms continuing to be the true power in UPN

Almost 1000 votes. I think this is the most popular/interacted-with thread on the OWF since NPOLT.

Attrition. Congrats Kram, I'm sure you will be a breath of fresh air for Rose. Good luck.

I frankly disagree with you and @Keegoz. Raiding is the only mechanic that has served the community in being a loud minority keeping away bad updates. Raiding is not just playing to loot money, it's a style of play where you can be at war more frequently than the average player. On the surface this may seem like a loophole that requires fixing, I think at this point the playerbase as a whole enjoys the "style" of PnW. Most of us just want more content and meat -- stuff like adding Generals or Perks. Rebalancing the game over and over again with extremely minor, yet inconvenient, tweaks is what has held up development in my years of playing PnW and being involved in the development process. Stop trying to tweak the game mechanics that everyone already uses and has for years, add new stuff we're begging. What I mean by style is that in PnW while you may go down, you have options. Raiding, soldiers-only, ground-only, tank flashing, missiles, and nukes. There's no true "out" as long as you're willing. Most war suggestions that interfere with raiding inevitably interfere with the overall style of PnW's mechanical play. The same mechanic which incentivizes aggressive play (blitzes being ridiculously strong) is also the same mechanic which gives raiders a chance in many wars.

Your fundamental misunderstanding is thinking that this will ever be a popular suggestion (it's like the Nth time nerfing nukes has come up) without first addressing the war system's flaws regarding options for losers. You want feedback on nuke changes, the feedback is: No changes. Also daily reminder that Hatebi causing a years-long meta debate around nukes is hilarious but yeah the updeclare range went too far, real it in a bit. Maybe for once try pushing smaller changes in shorter windows though. So instead of smashing it down to 2.0, try 2.25 or even 2.35x score first. See how we feel after the first trillion-dollar war rather than wait a full year.

Not bad, flesh this out more though. It would be nice to see this get more creative rather than become another poorly balanced part of the "rock, papers, scissors" thing. My thought would be to give navies a drop down list of operations (like planes) that give the player choice and utility: 1. Blockade (Reduces resistance but avoids a large naval battle, lower casualties than normal) 2. Break Blockade (in my opinion it should be easier to break a blockade than establish one) 3. Soften defenses (give ground units a significant buff to attack) 4. Airspace control (give attacking planes a significant debuff) 5. Shell coast -- reduces infra at a more efficient rate than planes. Big number go up. (Reduces resistance) 6. Direct naval engagement -- fleet vs. fleet, kills boats at a higher rate than the current naval attack. (Reduces resistance) Notice how only some options reduce resistance. Turtling and utility plays should be a thing. Also note the word "significant" because naval actions take 4 MAPs and reduce the most resistance other than nukes and missiles. These should be powerful options to reflect that you spent 33% of your daily MAPs. You could come up with more but the point is navies are extremely powerful tools irl. PnW has long neglected that fact. Pretty solid idea just don't timelock it like cities. Respectfully, return to the chalkboard here. I think what you're describing would fit better as an espionage mechanic.

Why is Sketchy a wiki mod