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Upper Tier Superiority


Lu Xun
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I want to ask, does upper tier superiority actually matter in this game? This war, Paracovenant fought Mensynd with enough of a statistical superiority so it wasn't a pure dogpile, yet despite having the upper tier advantage, the weak middle tier means that they will probably lose the war.

 

I have it theorized that it's the -25 / +75% war range that renders upper tier superiority moot. As wars continue, eventually different factions create safe zones in different tiers, but it is always possible to attack up, but not always possible to attack down, so individual large nations can be sniped.

 

However, there seem to be two exceptions to this. First, Alpha was highly efficient and ate through Roz Wei and Seven Kingdoms extremely quickly, perhaps because of the skill of its fighters and also perhaps because, as a Syndicate treaty partner, they were not dogpiled.

 

Second, it is possible for top-tier nations to drop down to hit lower-tier nations simply by selling infra. Paracovenant, if it so chooses, and can also get its upper tier to take one for the team, can counter snipe attempts by intentionally purging infra to lower score so that their upper tier can engage attackers. This can get extremely expensive, however.

 

If my supposition is correct, though, it is the middle tier that usually wins fights. Middle tiers tend to be closely packed and dense enough so that sniping attempts from below don't work, while being capable of sniping upper tier nations. Consequently, for alliances, it makes sense to focus on developing the middle-tier; the upper-middle tier if they expect to have an upper-tier disadvantage, and the lower-middle tier if they expect to have an upper-tier advantage. If this tendency does hold, it's necessarily good for the game, because upper-tier dominance tends to correlate with game stagnancy as the players who've spent years on their pixels crowd out new players and prevent them from getting a foothold, lowering the overall population before leaving themselves from boredom.

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01:05:55 <%fistofdoom> im out of wine

01:06:03 <%fistofdoom> i winsih i had port
01:06:39 <@JoshF{BoC}> fistofdoom: is the snowman drunk with you

01:07:32 <%fistofdoom> i knet i forgot somehnt

 

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Riling Pfeiffer is playing the game, so no.

 

I'm hoping Paracovenant has a lessons learned thread in their collective forums, though.

 

IMO, a couple of major mistakes was that:

 

#1, either there was no coalition agreement on how the war would be executed before Rose entered, or the coalition members balked out despite having previous informal agreements. Compare that to Mensynd dropping a shitload of alliances on rose immediately and efficiently.

 

#2, Rose underdeclared on Mensa. Rose probably has a deserved reputation for military subparity, but a bit more mass would have allowed Rose members to all declare one war each, apply a greater numerical superiority during the declare, and hold up better during the war. Subsequent declarations were also underdeclares; VE, for instance, really overstretched itself countering Mensynd coalition members.

 

#3, upper tier superiority doesn't work. Mass alliances inherently have an advantage in being more vital than elite alliances, but as in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways), there are degenerate mass alliances where the bulk of resources and political will goes into favoring the upper tier. In PnW, however, the -25/+75% declare range means that upper tier advantages are often difficult to parlay into full-spectrum dominance, even though this war faintly resembled MKarma in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways), where DBDC and elites held upper tier dominance and the enemy coalition, despite a numerical superiority, balked at sieging the DBDC-held tiers because while they had a reasonable chance of winning, they didn't want to take the disproportionate losses suiciding up. Here, however, Mensynd definitely could have sniped upwards after stabilizing the mid-tiers.

 

Of course, as you say, the extent of me "playing" the game is limited to buying credits, giving people free credits, and commenting "senselessly / uselessly" on the game. As in IRC, though, I do claim disability; if I play a game, I will play it through devotedly and to the exclusion of my life, which is something I can't afford. If I were to play PnW, I would say I have a .8 chance of being rolled and a .5 chance of losing my mind and I prefer to have and develop my RL than play this game intensively. I suppose I will settle for riling Pfeiffer, and this is enough.

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If your brain is so tiny you can't multitask on a low-involvement game like this and RL you have a serious problem. Mensa is famous for activity and half of us fought this war from airport lounges and hotels.

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☾☆


Priest of Dio

just because the Nazis did something doesn't mean it's automatically wrong

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What's your average yearly income? What's your average level of education? I am, so far, doing reasonably well at being a 4.0 GPA student, and I am planning to transfer into some of the more rigorous programs in the country. I would rather obsess over getting a good honors thesis, developing the ability to rapidly crank out a mid-tier / shitty masters thesis, working on business deals through the family firm as extracurriculars, and maybe selling "rare squid eggs" to the Chinese, as the rumor has now spouted.

Edited by Inst

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What's your average yearly income? What's your average level of education? I am, so far, doing reasonably well at being a 4.0 GPA student, and I am planning to transfer into some of the more rigorous programs in the country. I would rather obsess over getting a good honors thesis, developing the ability to rapidly crank out a mid-tier / shitty masters thesis, working on business deals through the family firm as extracurriculars, and maybe selling "rare squid eggs" to the Chinese, as the rumor has now spouted.

I had to look up what a 4.0 GPA student is and I am not impressed.

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I didn't say to impress, but to explain, as it can be time intensive. Depending on the institution, 4.0 can be trivial or it can represent an exceptional achievement; Kissinger, for instance, was only one of 5 to have graduated from Harvard with a 4.0, but in general grade inflation is everywhere, while in high school, 4+ GPAs are the norm, MIT uses a 5.0 grading scale, and certain elite tertiary institutions grant A+ or 4.33s, which probably accounts for their high suicide rate. Anyways, war is over, I'll do one more update on the stats tracker, but have fun kiddies.

Edited by Inst
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I didn't say to impress, but to explain, as it can be time intensive. Depending on the institution, 4.0 can be trivial or it can represent an exceptional achievement; Kissinger, for instance, was only one of 5 to have graduated from Harvard with a 4.0, but in general grade inflation is everywhere, while in high school, 4+ GPAs are the norm, MIT uses a 5.0 grading scale, and certain elite tertiary institutions grant A+ or 4.33s, which probably accounts for their high suicide rate. Anyways, war is over, I'll do one more update on the stats tracker, but have fun kiddies.

so can inst explain why people from mensa dislike him???!

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#3, upper tier superiority doesn't work. Mass alliances inherently have an advantage in being more vital than elite alliances, but as in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways), there are degenerate mass alliances where the bulk of resources and political will goes into favoring the upper tier. In PnW, however, the -25/+75% declare range means that upper tier advantages are often difficult to parlay into full-spectrum dominance, even though this war faintly resembled MKarma in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways), where DBDC and elites held upper tier dominance and the enemy coalition, despite a numerical superiority, balked at sieging the DBDC-held tiers because while they had a reasonable chance of winning, they didn't want to take the disproportionate losses suiciding up. Here, however, Mensynd definitely could have sniped upwards after stabilizing the mid-tiers.

(That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways) is a completely different game where a nation with high land and tech is always going to wipe the floor with you, doesn't matter what you do. The only thing you can do to help is to decom your tanks and soldiers.

So no this game is never going to turn into (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways). 

Edited by Clarke

IpHGyGc.png

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It can turn into (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways) if it's filled with terrible people whining about how depressed they are and mocking each other for their shitty lives.

 

My point is more that while Paracovenant had upper tier dominance, and was aiming for upper tier dominance, this was also the reason they lost. It's simply too hard to attack down and too easy to attack up. A strong upper middle tier or a strong upper tier and a strong lower middle tier is probably more potent than simply focusing resources to the infinity tier, as in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways), and this is one of the reasons PnW is healthier than (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways).

 

Unless you'd wish to disagree, as you have more combat experience.

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Okay, if you think that. I've got work to do.

 

One thing, though, is that in my experience, there's a difference between a foot soldier, a functionary, and a leader. I would say I was a mediocre foot soldier, a decent functionary, and a terrible leader, but being a foot soldier isn't fun, being a functionary is a matter of "loving" an alliance, and I'm too old for that, and while I think being an leader is great, one, I'm not that good at that, and while it can change, it can sometimes take up way too much work. I've seen that myself, from a mid-tier position.

 

===

 

The other thing is that things are sort of changing with me. If you're cheap, you can screw with expensive people even on a relative basis you are spending more effort than they are, because their effort is worth more than yours. I am slowly becoming expensive, and I can't take all my time arguing with you.

Edited by Inst

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I have no idea what garbage is coming out your mouth, but as I said myself and most of my colleagues in Mensa are past the age of university study and have full time jobs and responsibilities, and we still manage to play this game just fine. I think excuses are excuses, and the old "if you're a worse player than me you're a noob, if you're better than me you have no life" argument is well and truly stale by now.

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☾☆


Priest of Dio

just because the Nazis did something doesn't mean it's automatically wrong

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I have no idea what garbage is coming out your mouth, but as I said myself and most of my colleagues in Mensa are past the age of university study and have full time jobs and responsibilities, and we still manage to play this game just fine. I think excuses are excuses, and the old "if you're a worse player than me you're a noob, if you're better than me you have no life" argument is well and truly stale by now.

so inst goes over densa's head?

 

no suprise! down with dio!

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I have no idea what garbage is coming out your mouth, but as I said myself and most of my colleagues in Mensa are past the age of university study and have full time jobs and responsibilities, and we still manage to play this game just fine. I think excuses are excuses, and the old "if you're a worse player than me you're a noob, if you're better than me you have no life" argument is well and truly stale by now.

For Inst it's not an excuse, if he devoted himself to really playing the game he'd spend so much time on it it would hurt his RL.  Most people are capable of playing to do well without making it an obsession or super time consuming.  Inst isn't.

 

Not saying this to take either side in this, but just an observation as someone who did lots of (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways) stuff with Inst.

Edited by Azaghul
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For Inst it's not an excuse, if he devoted himself to really playing the game he'd spend so much time on it it would hurt his RL.  Most people are capable of playing to do well without making it an obsession or super time consuming.  Inst isn't.

 

Not saying this to take either side in this, but just an observation as someone who did lots of (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways) stuff with Inst.

 

So my advice would be to avoid shit posting here.  When I was a freshman in college I played SC2 and I was really good (for the time).  I had to stop so I could pass my classes.  But that is what I did, I stopped.  I did not log into the forums and opine about tweaks to the classes and who was OP at the time because I was no longer a dedicated player so I didn't really fracking know if Tos was OP or not.

 

Inst comes here with some sort of agenda, doesn't play, and shit posts.  The biggest issue with this is apparently people know him from his hyper-active (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways) time where he undoubtedly knew what was going on and had valid opinions.  God forbid that sheepy listens to him or more generally the community gives his ideas weight.

 

Protip: Tos is almost always OP.

-signature removed for rules violation-

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@Spite: well, tbh, I talked to someone you do respect, and while the mechanics are much different (for instance, they were flabbergasted to hear that alliances could break psychologically in other games before they broke statistically), the sociology, the psychology, and the organizational aspects are the same. All of the stuff you're spouting (blah blah blah we're awesome, we have lives, etc) is extremely familiar to me, we've done this before, the ex-CNers are familiar with it for what it is, and it doesn't impress us, although perhaps your fighting ability may.

 

Anyways, I'm just a war troll at this point; I came here to check on whether the organization that should not be called Paracovenant could finally beat Mensynd, compile some warstats since no one else seemed to want to do it, and now that the war is over, I'll compile final warstats and come back next war. While I don't necessarily appreciate the shitstorm that seems to follow me everywhere, I like having "Densa" (captain vietnam is good for something for once!) posters waste their time responding to someone who has been through far worse abuse than they've been able to put out. On the other hand, however, because I'm going back to school and taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to me, I'm beginning to become expensive, so our relative cost expenditure (the efforts of one polemicist vs half an alliance) is no longer favorable.

 

Dunno.

 

====

 

I'm abandoning this thread for now, gotta focus on homework. The original point of the thread was supposed to be "was [the coalition that should not be called Paracovenant]'s decision to focus on the upper tier a mistake? If they had opted to divert resources towards building their upper mid and lower mid tiers, would this war have ended differently?" If you want to continue here, please discuss that point instead.

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&#33;@#&#036;ing (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways)...   Inst, was (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways) the only browser game you have played?  cuz the kind of shit that happens in PnW happens in pretty much every browser game, from (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways) and eRep to Tribal Wars and Travian.

☾☆

Warrior of Dio

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Literally nothing you say makes any sense. I'm astounded that you're considered smart when your communication skills are so poor. 

 

I *think* you're saying you spoke to someone I respected (I guess this is someone in Mensa leadership, but again making assumptions) and then you make some sort of comparison to other games, which I don't get since I didn't bring this up. Then you talk about the "we have lives thing" as if this was something I raised, when it was something you raised. I fully believe that you can play videogames and have a RL in the same way you can play football, be a member of a book club, go to the gym, and a host of other social activities and still have a functional work and emotional life. I have a lot of hobbies and I divide my time between them depending on my interest level at the time. Then you start talking about Mensa as if I somehow brought Mensa's in game fighting abilities or culture into it, which I didn't.

 

What people get pissed off about is that you turn up and make totally stupid, but incredibly in-depth analysis. It's analysis that 95% of the people on this forum would be able to see as BS at first glance, since they actively play the game. But you post it with such self-entitled authority it frustrates people, since you seem absolutely convinced you're correct. It's usually so bad people don't even waste time arguing against the substance of your argument, but instead just dismiss the source. That isn't the best way to deal with an argument, but I think in this particular case it's forgiveable. 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by you being expensive. If you think you're wasting your time shitposting then I'd agree. I'm not sure why you keep posting about how you're going to school (I assume you mean a university) like this is somehow something impressive and not just the norm? I'd assume the majority of people here, certainly the overwhelming majority in my own faction, are university graduates or currently studying.

☾☆


Priest of Dio

just because the Nazis did something doesn't mean it's automatically wrong

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ogame, silicon dawn, astronest, merchant empires (i think), origins return (ogame knockoff, doesn't really count), war games 2.0 (beat the snot out of a top-tier alliance almost single-handedly there)... might have been more, I don't actually remember.

 

I am really gone for now, but one point that's relevant. In (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways), a lot of people were unhappy because the admin never listened to players' suggestions, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I forget, was it NecAnt? Someone got a change to the war system moved through wherein a certain statistic controlled how much damage you dealt, instead of merely whether or not your attack was successful. That sort of ruined the game; afterwards, elite alliances become ultra-dominant and killed the mass alliances that used to keep the game alive by recruiting and retaining new players. The suggestion came from someone in an elite alliance, so basically, his suggestion, while rational, was also self-interested.

 

Player suggestions in this game are often those that favor their own alliance. For instance, I saw that a few Rose members upvoted my complaint on your thread derailment in the UPN propaganda thread. That's self-interested, because you ruined the thread of their ally. Mensa would prefer a moderation policy that favors Mensa (I'm banned, Mensa shitposts however and whenever they want on the forums) and a game design that plays specifically to their strengths.

 

As someone who is, or at least was, purely neutral, I don't offer input that's supposed to benefit me. I may have deficits; I only look at things slowly because I don't play, I will likely not break the game system, but at the same time I don't have incentives to create a game that's good for me and bad for the game as a whole.

 

@Spite: I could be rude, or I could be nice, or I could just say "I'm sorry, I don't speak idiot". That said, though, I'm curious, what are the achievements you don't want to mention? Games like this, if you want to play properly (mid-level gov, high-level gov), take time. I do know that, for instance, in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn&#39;t be bringing it up anyways), there was a Greek shipping magnate who played in a war-oriented variant in his spare time (and he was both hated and unsuccessful in game), and I know in EVE Online there was a Russian Oligarch who supposedly bought almost $1 million worth of ISK for his alliance. One thing I do think is that these people came to play the game after they were successful; not while they were climbing up the ranks. I am familiar with a ton of people who "played seriously" to the extent that they ruined their lives; but at this point I'm not revealing their personal details.

Edited by Inst

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