An attempt at implementing a balanced version of City Conquest

[Sam Hyde]

(AKA, Wars should actually mean something instead of being easily repairable infra destruction and meager resource lootage)

 

First of all, >inb4shitideailovemycitiesidon'twanttoqqoverlosteffortthiswillmakeraidersop

 

Now that we got that out of the way, I'm irked about the fact City/Project Conquest isn't a thing; this addition alone would make big inter-alliance wars actually high stakes and extremely painful (as you could lose millions of dollars in your investments), instead of the current scenario, which involves spitefully crashing your planes with no survivors at the other guy to destroy his infrastructure for 5 days with no gain on your own part, with said infra being laughably easy to recover, unlike cities/projects.

 

A way to implement this without hopefully destroying game balance, could be this:

 

In order to conquer an enemy nation's city/project, there are 5 prerequisites your nation has to fill:

1. You haven't built/stolen a city/project in the last 10 days (to avoid raid-induced infinite city sprawl).

2. The enemy nation is in the same region as you (to avoid racking up resources you shouldn't have and keep trade alive; also, it encourages intra-regional warfare).

3. Your nation does not have all project slots filled up (5/4 projects? no way).

4. The enemy nation must have a project you don't currently possess (can't steal an ironworks if you have one already).

5. The enemy nation does not have only 1 city (this would mean your nation is dead, and no one wants their nation to be killed).

 

If you fulfill said prerequisites, and you win 6 ground battles in immense triumph as usual, instead of looting the nation and going your own way, you will have up to 3 choices, depending on what prerequisites are filled:

1. Loot the enemy's stockpiles, as usual.

2. Conquer a city the enemy has, adding it to your nation (city is randomly picked; if the enemy has just one city, this option is disabled).

3. Seize a project the enemy has, adding it to your nation (project is randomly picked, it cannot be a project already owned; if there is no project that can be looted, or you have no slots to house one, this option is disabled).

Of course, it goes without saying if you have the cooldown, you can't conquer shit.

 

Hopefully this will make wars actually feared and cause simmering grudges over stolen investments, instead of being nothing more than infra-destruction, followed by congratulating each other over a "good war".

 

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GOOD WAR.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Mammon

[Captain_Vietnam]

big nation have all project filled anyway

 

so more stuff to keep small nation up???

 

sound good

[Clarke]

A new nation could in theory get 20 cities in a week. 

[Sam Hyde]

A new nation could in theory get 20 cities in a week. 

 

>1. You haven't built a city/project in the last 10 days (to avoid raid-induced infinite city sprawl).

 

There's a reason I put that restriction in, so new nations don't get 21 cities at the first week.

[Clarke]

>1. You haven't built a city/project in the last 10 days (to avoid raid-induced infinite city sprawl).

 

There's a reason I put that restriction in, so new nations don't get 21 cities at the first week.

Stealing =/= Building. 

[Captain_Vietnam]

i dont think project stealing need though? projects should be perm???

[Sam Hyde]

Stealing =/= Building. 

 

Stealing also counts; once you steal a city, you need to wait another 10 days (edited OP to reflect that).

Edited December 12, 2015 by Mammon

[Peace and War]

Sounds pretty cool actually. Makes things alot more interesting when someone gets really heated that they lost a city.

[Hubotz]

A fundamental problem that needs to be addressed is the imbalance of loss/gain.

 

A city is worth little in the hands of a small nation, and a huge amount in the hands of a large nation. This can lead to exploits like small nations selling their cities to slightly larger nations for a hefty profit, since value is generated out of nowhere.

[Crust]

If this gets implemented, rebuilding infra for a losing nation should be cheaper. As it stands now, most alliances don't want to go to war because the price of not only rebuilding military but also infra costs a lot. Wars should be encouraged, not discouraged, so if it becomes harder and harder for nations to come back from a losing war it discourages more and more alliances from doing anything at all, which causes stagnation.

[Ekejen Luish]

A fundamental problem that needs to be addressed is the imbalance of loss/gain.

 

A city is worth little in the hands of a small nation, and a huge amount in the hands of a large nation. This can lead to exploits like small nations selling their cities to slightly larger nations for a hefty profit, since value is generated out of nowhere.

So? Let people sell their cities, for all I care. Nations make land purchases in real life, why not in game? I think it might be kind of cool, actually to have cities in the market.

[Vosunda]

So? Let people sell their cities, for all I care. Nations make land purchases in real life, why not in game? I think it might be kind of cool, actually to have cities in the market.

Terrible idea. The highly scaling increase of city price for older nations is one of the things that prevents the older nations from growing infinitely apart from the rest of the game. My nation is 6 or so months younger than the nations that started in August, but I've caught up and/or passed many of them in city count. Had cities not gotten much more expensive as it goes on, I'd have no chance to catch up.

[Edsel]

This is a terrible idea. War is already causes a lot of damage.

[Hubotz]

I think a sort of city relay would develop where each nation buys cities off of nations 58% as large as themselves and sells them to nations 175% as large as themselves, in which case the cities are slowly transferred down the war range line and collect at the largest nations.

 

This doesn't seem like it would be too great.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Hubotz

[Redael]

My problem with this-

A city is a lot of heavy buildings that will most likely not move, or at best break if moved, are you going to do it avengers-style, if so make this a really expensive and time consuming thing to do, unless someone else can think of a more efficient way to move a city

[johnl023]

You could make some way to cede cities, as a surrender term or something.

[TellUrGrlThx]

I'd rather have the chance to destroy a city if I destroy all of its infra.

[Jacob Hanson]

Its mentioned above, but scaling city cost really makes this a terrible idea. I like the concept; but Stealing someones #12 and onward city is extremely costly to them, and gives a ridiculous advantage to the winning nation. 

 

Unless you all want to be raided silly by people pillaging cities, I dont think you want this. 

 

I think something could be implemented where you could "loot a project" and steal a majority of the resources/cash needed to build the project. 

 

I also think a step in the right direction would be making it so the city you are stealing has to be a yourcities + 1 minimum. For example I could have someone build up to a level where I could hit them, Pay them to build the city and then steal the city from them. Recieving a city #8 as my 12th city and in turn paying a fraction of the cost. 

[Nadir Aminu]

This actually isn't a horrible idea. I'd definitely go into war more if this were possible.

[Guest Frawley]

I'd prefer something like 5-15 days 'occupation' where the winner takes 50% of the city's income/resource production.  Taking fixed time dependant assets is a tough sell for me.

[Abu Haddad]

Why not simplify and simply 'steal' a percentage of land and or Infra

[Glorton]

An occupation would be better then completely stealing a city. Still with occupation, i would make it very difficult to do. Make it to where you would need a certain amount of soldiers needed for the amount of infra in the occupied city. Say the city has 1000 infra, you would need at minimum 10000 troops to be deployed in that city and those troops are not allowed to be used in any other conflict until the occupation expires. Also there will be rebels in that city killing off your soldiers and if you drop below the minimum troops required you lose occupation. Would also make it only 1 deployment a day allowed to sorta balance things out.

 

Maybe the defending nation can gives the rebels support like munitions and gas or even troop support but can leave that for another discussion.

 

as for the projects i have no opinion besides just leave them alone.

[Abu Haddad]

This is far too complicated. Just let an attacking nation cede some of the losers land into their own

The change will be felt but not to an extent it changes the game

Edited December 14, 2015 by Abu Haddad