Vemek

Serious one: #notbait

To parrot what I said in the dev team channel: Although the premise behind the idea is enticing, it has several flaws within it. For one, infrastructure is not a valid indicator of whether or not someone is losing a war, people already aim to minimise infra damage to prevent the enemies score from dropping too low. Furthermore, as the war continues, infrastructure levels tend to drop and sit somewhere <1000 levels, especially for the losing side. Unit damages is an ideal way of judging damages taken, but at the same time is difficult to judge. If it was feasible without the several glaring gaps in the system I would really like it. Is it a percentage based system on how much you initially had at the start of the war? Or based on flat damages dealt? The former means anyone can simply decom all their units, declare a bunch of wars and farm free beige. The latter means that you can be infinitely pinned once you are zeroed. I really can't see any meaningful methods of fleshing this system out so that it could work. All of this was brought up in the discord by several other people besides me. This idea wasn't even polished out by us in a doc like so many of the others were, it was mostly touched upon in a few messages on discord before we realised the troubles with implementing a system like this. I genuinely appreciate your efforts to get extra feedback by posting this in a more public format and I know much of what is said on discord tends to get drowned out unless it's written on a doc so it is difficult to go back and refer on the feedback given in the moment, but why not also bring out the several other proposals listed out by us? I don't see much need in limiting discussion to what is arguably the most half-baked idea we had, especially when there were alternatives that did much of the same thing (disassociating beige with losing wars) much more effectively.

This honestly seems like a pretty good system, though the length of time you can store your beige over would need to be tweaked pretty carefully because a pirate could very easily gather 5 days of beige, declare, deploy their beige at will and attack counter free. Alternatively, you could cap the beige bank at say, 12-15 turns and use it in conjunction with the planned beige system, so getting beiged provides you with 20 turns of beige, as well as time added to the bank that you can use at will. This prevents raiders from being able to rush a beige against a target without any opposition since they'll get countered at the tail end of their beige time, but also means that the same element of strategy is added (though to a lesser extent). This is a suggestion I came up with on like 3 hours of sleep so there's probably a couple holes in my idea that I haven't thought of.

I'm going to refer to Alex's reasoning in the other thread on why offensive beige should be removed: This same scenario can very easily be reversed. You declaring war on an ally just to give yourself beige time is also very obviously slot filling, and it's a lot harder to claim that it's something else. There really isn't any difference between the two, and all that removing offensive beige does is sacrifice a much-needed mechanic in fighting back during a losing war in exchange for reduction in the frequency of slot-filling, which can quite simply be moderated just as it has been for the past however many years since beige has been implemented. There will always be more discrete, difficult to discern situations with slot-filling, but if people are committed enough to go that far in hiding it, removing offensive beige isn't going to stop them either. This change quite clearly has the potential to balance out several factors in the war system and beige, but removing offensive wars providing beige goes against several of the much needed counter-balances in the game when fighting in an uphill war.

Thanks for the explanation, I can see why you'd want to distance yourself from moderation considering the nuances of slot-filling and the backlash with every decision taken in regards to it, but honestly I don't think there's much of a need to consider it as slot-filling. My main question is why exactly it needs to be considered as such: I'm basically reiterating my points in the previous post but beige was intended to help people get back up after losing a war. You're really only going to overextend to get some beige time because you're losing a war, and need to a window to build back up in without any further attacks. It's definitely not a foolproof tactic as you can get punished if even one of your offensive wars decides to sit on you instead of beiging. It rewards 'skill' and punishes a lack of it, gives beige in cases where people genuinely need it and also provides a better comeback mechanic, hence I don't really see a downside to it. Although this definitely isn't a horrible change that ruins war, it takes away some of the depth in the war system when it's already incredibly simple. If you choose to not regard this as slot-filling, it takes away the only real problem I can see besides the 'tainting' of beige, which is naturally going to be there regardless of whether offensive wars no longer provide beige.

What exactly was the problem with this though? There's really only two scenarios where you get beiged in an offensive war: Either you overextend on purpose in order to get beige time, which I don't see it as a problem because it gave people much needed rebuild time if they were struggling (which is basically the only time you'll overextend like that in the first place) and doesn't create any grey areas within the rules that could be debated. You get caught out by counters and are genuinely losing your offensive wars, in which case you really will need that beige time. To my knowledge, nobody considered baiting beige (through legitimate wars) as problems within the war system. If you manage to do so, that simply goes down to you taking the risk and being 'skilled' enough (with the relatively low skill ceiling there is) to bait the beige as well as your enemy being incompetent/unaware. It punishes lack of knowledge/skill and rewards having knowledge/skill. Alternatively, if you really dislike the 'abuse' of beige here, it's a much better suggestion to just reduce the beige time you get from offensive wars. It reduces the effectiveness of doing this, meaning that you'd only do it in more extreme circumstances while still making it viable.

Once a unit has been in reserve status for 10 days it is moved to active duty automatically. This means a blitz won't do shit. For example, let's assume there are two alliances, Alliance B and Alliance A. Alliance A blitzes Alliance B, who we will say are running max planes. Alliance B can just decom any units they have (or even suicide them in), and start building into reserves, which cannot be touched by anything besides spies, and at extremely low casualties. Wars last at most for a period of 5 days, over these 5 days Alliance B can literally max out their military and keep it in reserve, because they're only moved into active duty in 10 days, the length of 2 wars. Let's assume alliance A somehow ludicrously manages to 'win' the spy war from the initial contact and can even start spying Alliance B's military. Alliance B still has 10 days over which to rebuild their military, and come back out unscathed except for some infra damage. Even any superiority gained is worthless because they can simply wait for the wars to expire, and then attack. Effectiveness of the blitz? Zero. Hotel? Trivago.

Just going to say, thanks and good on you for listening to the community and making a fair decision in terms of the slot-filling. That said, I don't think removing beige is the best change going forward, especially with it being that much easier to consistently keep a target slotted, as well as taking some of the depth away in the war system as beige discipline has always been a rather important factor for alliances, and baiting beige was another tactic employed. This suggestion Akuryo gave honestly seems like a pretty good idea, and definitely better than both past and present iterations of beige, it creates a balance where you have to decide between giving your enemies beige time or causing more damage which ideally would be a case by case basis rather than "sit at x resistance and pin them" and would hence create a little more complexity in the currently relatively simple small-scale nation on nation warring.

Hey Alex, frick your no-discussion forum. Jk don't delete this post Disclaimer that I don't know if you're discussing this off the forums with the parties involved, but based on what's shown here it seems like there's a need for consistency and clarity. People have provided massive amounts of evidence and explanations as to what went down and by the definition of the game rules regarding slot-filling, this is not slot filling unless you exercise 'moderator discretion', or plan to make changes to the rules. Moderator discretion itself doesn't make much sense as the exact same thing was reported by someone else, and it was ruled to be within the rules, and was allowed. This practice has also been going on for several years already. Really, although I think there's absolutely no reason to punish the people here, if you're going to do so, I'm sure many of us would appreciate it if you made a proper stance, sticked to it, and announced it. If you're planning on banning this practice (I don't think you should, but that's neither here nor there), it would be far better to make more specific rules on what 'slot filling' entails exactly, and then remove the nation strikes on the TCW nations. People can't be punished all of a sudden with nation strikes for taking part in a long standing practice. How are they supposed to know that this is now a rule violation when it has never been one before? If you're planning on enforcing this in retrospect, go ahead, make the change to the game rules and provide specifics on slot filling, but to punish someone out of the blue when this has been allowed for several years already isn't a very promising stance. If you don't intend on banning this practice, (because quite frankly it simply isn't slot filling according to the definition of slot filling right now), then undo the strikes on the TCW nations, acknowledge your mistake and move on. I don't believe you intentionally showed favouritism to Borg's report, as you've proven many times that you do want to create as fair a game as possible and I do appreciate that, whether the difference in response to the reports was influenced by an unconscious reaction or simply by a more well written post, I don't view you as someone to show bias simply because of a friendship with a player, but that is a very common view harboured at the moment among some people, and responding with "This is a no discussion forum" when this is an issue that very clearly needs to be discussed isn't going to help. And I was planning on making this a shitpost.

This is so wrong to the degree that I can't conceive of any possibility other than that this is a troll post and therefore already hate myself for bothering to post and taking the bait.

1) Yes, they can, except when they get ZI'd with an army 3 times their size. The two people sending units to the attacker could get wiped in other areas. But that's two people losing some of their mil for anywhere between 3-8 people getting wiped. 2) "Spy ops" - Quite simply put: is there a benefit brought about by forcing this to be done by spy ops? Not really, no. So is there a reason to force spy ops? Not really, no. As a separate point however, there could be merit in spy ops showing who's sending the units. 3) "Huge comebacks" - Sacrificing two fronts to save one front is not worth it. 4) "Shot up into such ranges anymore" - no, not under the current system but with what you're proposing where you can literally increase your units by up to 200%, you do get shot up, and city advantage means they can rebuild faster while you cannot. 5) "As for pirates, they also have an alliance" - That's not how most pirates operate. Their alliance members will have to refrain from engaging in raids for the sole purpose of helping one other guy just so they can raid an active, and even in that case pirates don't run the same mil normal players do, putting them at a disadvantage. 6) Time periods - The problem I pointed out there was that you'd be forced to have the units available for 2 hours, which makes them even more vulnerable like I said. 'Example' numbers are irrelevant as to my knowledge, every system similar to what you're describing relies on turn change, meaning 2 hours has to be the time limit. Yeah, I agree with that, and to rephrase, at times it can be detrimental to blockade (which simply shouldn't be a thing, having space control shouldn't be bad for you no matter what), my bad :x

Alright then, so to point out some stuff in no particular order; 1) Blockading someone with additional units becomes detrimental to you with this, it does not make ships important whatsoever. According to you, the units can only be used for 60 minutes once a day, which means if you're blockaded you're allowed to keep the units you have and attack with them as well, allowing you to trounce not only the single idiot who blockaded you, but also however many other people you're fighting. 2) Forcing people to do espionage ops is pointless, because it hinges entirely on the minute chance that the other person has deployed units within the same 60 minute period where you spy on them. All in all, this doesn't seem like it would have much impact in the game. Sending units to someone else leaves you extremely open, as not only are a certain number of units lost, you're also locked out from rebuilding them, meaning there wouldn't be much reason to even attempt something like this except for lulz, for pirates raiding or for small-scale counters. It won't add much complexity to larger-scale wars as anyone who deploys units could be very easily pinned down, and the person with all these units would deal some initial damage only to be shot up into range of people with higher city counts who can systematically grind them down with superior buy rates after getting a blockade on them. In addition to this, this quite literally kills all the pirates that don't subsist on a stale diet of inactives every day. Even if they raid someone they would not only have to deal with 3 counters nows, but also 6 different people adding to the unit counts of each of them. Also, correct me if I'm wrong but the unit activity period (60 minutes) would likely have to occur in a 2 hour space rather than 1 hour because of turn change time period. Which enhances other issues in this. This is all stuff I came up with on the spot while typing for 5 or so minutes. The fact is with so many variables (for lack of a better term) and moving parts (ditto) I'm sure there are people out there who could quickly find some more gamey shit in this, which would only see limited use otherwise.

Couple of questions to get this straight before I actually talk about the project: 1) It shouldn't be very expensive to build the project, but using it should be a little bit more expensive than "e.x; espionage reports" as it might be used only during wartime - Is there a cost to using the units? Is it a flat cost regardless of how much you're withdrawing? Is it the cost of the units themselves? Is there an extra cost when you're sending your units? 2) if you're blockaded, and you're also carrying someones else units on you - the units cannot be returned to the original owner nation until you leave the blockade - Are the units unusable when you are blockaded? If yes, ships are now a must have. If no, they're a detriment to your war effort if someone can just keep an army twice the size they should have because of a blockade. 3) maximum deployments from other alliance nations to your nation would be 2 deployments - Is a 'deployment' for one unit in particular? Or for all of them? Can I stack them, so if my plane cap is 750, I could get 1500 planes total from two nations? 4) the units from other nations cannot be seen(unless successfully spied when they're already in that nation - What about when you're at war with them? You shouldn't have to do a gather intel op every time before attacking (if your opponent is active within the last hour) just to make sure you don't zerg rush into a deathstack. 5) it would take approximately 60 minutes for a nation to send its units in aid of another alliance nation - During that time, are the units no longer available to the person sending the units? 6) No specific quote for this, but would a spy op also show who's sending the units?

Depends really on your definition of ‘winning’, making moves to strengthen your own position and become the most ‘powerful’ alliance/bloc is what drives a lot of politics, but the line is drawn when you over-consolidate to the point of being completely untouchable. What is ideal is if alliances aim for a state of ‘winning’ at the moment rather than a ‘game over’ style victory.

Well frick me in the ass and call me Roquentin then. It’s almost as if people struggle to ‘forgive and forget’ in less than half the time the war actually lasted after being strangled with the intention of bring driven out of the game for 8 months. The thoughts laid out by the vast majority of people here isn’t an eternal grudge like NPO had (to the point where they defined their entire policy with certain alliances as their enemies essentially for their entire existence), people here are simply saying that when the NAP comes around Camelot may very well get rolled. It’s a more than reasonable expectation to hold. What happens after that war is up to them, to truly prove that their FA has genuinely shifted from the spiteful machine of IQ. While I do believe that it’s necessary for people to eventually move on from the past instead of festering toxicity leading to Paracov 2.0, it’s also important to actually use politics in this game. Sure, wars declared simply for ‘fun’ can bring enjoyment, but at the same time players often need a reason to keep fighting, a CB. If we set the precedent of ‘oh it’s in the past’ without a single war fought, what type of future does that set in terms of wars? Tldr; sure, forgive but not instantly, and forget, but not instantly. Also, frick you for making me type this on phone ❤️

This update helps smaller nations far more, with low tier raiding being the best way to actually make money in the early game, reducing the unraidable cap for lower tier means that you can make more money off raiding. In the case of a whale, at the moment the person with the most cities (Wampus) gets an unraidable cap of 2.25m, this is practically pocket change in the higher tiers, it's in no way a massive buff to the whales, it's simply a far better adjustment. Furthermore, projects focused on the lower tier are much harder to design as you would need it to become less viable as you tier up, and since people tend to reach mid/lower mid tier fairly quickly, those projects won't see much use and are wasted time that could be invested elsewhere in polishing out features, designing new ones etc.

By the way @King Arthur, would you be so kind as to explain what caused such a dramatic shift in your views?

Put your mouth where your words are, or something like that. Sorry I just wanted to jump on the bandwagon

So, a long time back @Prefontaine (credits xd) came up with a topic for ranking the top 10 alliances in terms of their relevance, and as far as I know we haven't had anything similar in a while. At the time as a new player I found it incredibly interesting and revealing in terms of the game and the 'meta' set by it. Since then, the political landscape has vastly changed, with old powerhouses disappearing and new blocs propping up, so I'd say that now would be an interesting time to estimate influence of alliances with the lull of the NAP and the tensions of the last war in full effect. Pretty similar criteria to what Pre had: rank them based on your own feelings, there are no set parameters upon which all of this is based. Just for reference, (not limited to this) here's the top 15: I'll avoid listing my own rankings for now.

The perfect ploy, group in downvotes and this idea together to make it seem like it has overwhelming support.

"4/5 approaching 1b" and having only one member in your actual aa is a stark difference from "causing billions in net damage" and "zeroing". Don't double down on me now You seem rather eager to apologise here, but if you insist...

Don't worry friend, I don't believe anyone here is so unreasonable as to ask you to apologise for something you never did.