2/22/2016 - Military Caps & Donation Changes

[Hereno]

And the intent is not to take away from the strategy at all, the spirit behind this change is to give smaller nations an advantage against the much larger nations picking on them. I've received more complaints that I can count from players who have threatened to quit or have quit because someone with 7 more cities than them is attacking them and they can't do anything to stop them. A number of solutions were looked at, from changing the war range to a city based system, to completely changing the score formula. This is the smallest change that could be made to give those small nations a little bit of an advantage, and it doesn't even stop someone with 7 more cities from declaring war on them - it just gives them more of a chance to fight back.

for someone to win, someone has to lose. your entire war system is based around a first strike bonus that makes comebacks nearly impossible, while at the same time, allowing for incomplete control and tactical fighting. if someone bigger than you hits you first, you're done in a 1v1, that's just how it works. always has worked that way. there's nothing stopping people from doing what raiders do - why would you punish people who are doing what your system was originally designed to do - encourage warfare? this is a complete 360 reversal from the entire rest of your philosophy regarding the war system.

[Alex]

for someone to win, someone has to lose. your entire war system is based around a first strike bonus that makes comebacks nearly impossible, while at the same time, allowing for incomplete control and tactical fighting. if someone bigger than you hits you first, you're done in a 1v1, that's just how it works. always has worked that way. there's nothing stopping people from doing what raiders do - why would you punish people who are doing what your system was originally designed to do - encourage warfare? this is a complete 360 reversal from the entire rest of your philosophy regarding the war system.

 

I'm definitely in favor of first strikes being powerful, because that encourages people to take the initiative and start wars. Incomplete control, tactical fighting, yes, all pluses in my book. But for the same reason we don't let the #1 nation in the game relentlessly attack brand new players, we shouldn't let nations with 13 cities attack nations with 6. But I didn't even change the score or war range system to make it more restrictive, I just gave the defending nations in these scenarios a greater advantage. They'll still be outnumbered and likely lose, but at least it's better is the idea.

 

Seriously look at at the numbers for a 13 city nation vs. a 6 city nation:

 

 

Even with the caps, the 13 city nation still has a higher military capacity.

[Alex]

Here's a more unbiased picture, showing Nation 2 without caps as well:

 

You can see there's still a discrepancy in favor of having more cities with less infrastructure - the difference is that the discrepancy has been lessened to something far more acceptable than what we had before.

 

[Alex]

Hereno - here's the numbers ran with your nation, and the top nation in your war range (the highest score nation that could declare war on you) who has 11 cities, and averages less infra per city than you do. Take a look at the numbers and tell me you'd rather have it how it was before than how it is now.

 

 

And I'm not convinced at all that I've destroyed the strategy used by Arrgh and Political Pirates (as wasn't my intent) I've simply narrowed the margins so it's not so damn easy. That's all.

[Prefontaine]

Do you still need Soldiers to purchase tanks? Or population based only.

[Alex]

Hereno - here's the numbers ran with your nation, and the top nation in your war range (the highest score nation that could declare war on you) who has 11 cities, and averages less infra per city than you do. Take a look at the numbers and tell me you'd rather have it how it was before than how it is now.

 

 

And I'm not convinced at all that I've destroyed the strategy used by Arrgh and Political Pirates (as wasn't my intent) I've simply narrowed the margins so it's not so damn easy. That's all.

 

If you want to look at this in percentage terms (probably easier to compare the two scenarios to each other) here's the comparison for how many more units he could field than you can:

           Before | Now
Soldiers |    52% | 42%
Tanks    |    55% | 46%
Aircraft |    55% | 42%
Ships    |    55% | 42%

Do you still need Soldiers to purchase tanks? Or population based only.

 

It's now population based only, there's no soldier based limit.

[Dan77]

I'm definitely in favor of first strikes being powerful, because that encourages people to take the initiative and start wars. Incomplete control, tactical fighting, yes, all pluses in my book. But for the same reason we don't let the #1 nation in the game relentlessly attack brand new players, we shouldn't let nations with 13 cities attack nations with 6. But I didn't even change the score or war range system to make it more restrictive, I just gave the defending nations in these scenarios a greater advantage. They'll still be outnumbered and likely lose, but at least it's better is the idea.

 

Seriously look at at the numbers for a 13 city nation vs. a 6 city nation:

 

 

Even with the caps, the 13 city nation still has a higher military capacity.

 

This is ridiculous reasoning.

 

For one thing, why even show the nation 1 uncapped figures?  They were capped before and so this is wildly misleading.  The build you're showing looks remarkably like mine again and I maxed out at around 5k tanks.

 

Another crucial thing that you seem to be missing, is that should that 13 city nation attack a 6 city nation (not sure this actually happened), they won't be fighting them alone.  Nations with more than 6 cities and higher military caps will be attacking them in response.  Probably 3 of them at a time and from there with this terrible new setup, they are done for as many rounds as the attackers see fit.  Battles aren't fought individually, they are fought between alliances.  They also have no chance of rebuilding their infra to a suitable level while on beige (if anyone is actually stupid enough to beige them).

 

It's a very poorly thought through change, probably brought about by the usual pixel huggers in that (not so) secret forum.  Other peoples views and detailed reasoning (see Tywins well structured posts backed up by actual figures) are ignored.

[Hereno]

Hereno - here's the numbers ran with your nation, and the top nation in your war range (the highest score nation that could declare war on you) who has 11 cities, and averages less infra per city than you do. Take a look at the numbers and tell me you'd rather have it how it was before than how it is now.

 

 

And I'm not convinced at all that I've destroyed the strategy used by Arrgh and Political Pirates (as wasn't my intent) I've simply narrowed the margins so it's not so damn easy. That's all.

You're right, but the thing is, I'm !@#$ed either way if the guy at the top of my range hits me. All the stuff I said about switching to more expensive military options or to commerce is true, and in return you've made it harder for people to employ a different build strategy. Cities themselves already provide a score boost that doesn't come from infra, and improvement slots come from building infrastructure in cities. Like ask yourself why you think it's a good thing that someone with twice as many cities - giant sums of cash that go into a score-enhancing thing for no immediate payoff - should have almost identical armed forces levels to someone with half as many cities?

 

The playstyle of Arrgh! is one that favors frequent quick and seldom long-term military encounters. Fight a bit, grow a bit, fight and grow at the same time. Lose one, take a break for a week, go back and fight someone else for a few days and move on. That is interesting gameplay that limits growth through use of the warfare mechanic which is the only way to get rid of money-producing infrastructure. Like, it isn't that we're too dumb to realize that minimizing costs and maximizing what you spend on your infrastructure pays monetary dividends in the long-term. It's that we understand that anybody could do that.

 

The game is called "politics and war", which are two sides of the same coin - conflict. Either peaceful or with arms. Because that's what's fun. The point of infrastructure is to serve as a goal and as an economic apparatus for supporting the war system, which is an extension of the politics of the game. Everything you do that increases the war cycle and makes people less likely to attack each other and focus on growth increases the war cycle and makes the game crappier. People might cry and complain about having to actually fight and lose pixels, and yeah, you don't want just all war all the time for everyone, but in the long-term, activity and conflict are good in a game. Really, you should be looking at ways to make the upper tier more volatile and get us to destroy more infra and slow growth further.

[Alex]

Here's another real example of a relatively new nation that I picked at random, and the top person in their war range:

 

[Alex]

This is ridiculous reasoning.

 

For one thing, why even show the nation 1 uncapped figures?  They were capped before and so this is wildly misleading.  The build you're showing looks remarkably like mine again and I maxed out at around 5k tanks.

 

Another crucial thing that you seem to be missing, is that should that 13 city nation attack a 6 city nation (not sure this actually happened), they won't be fighting them alone.  Nations with more than 6 cities and higher military caps will be attacking them in response.  Probably 3 of them at a time and from there with this terrible new setup, they are done for as many rounds as the attackers see fit.  Battles aren't fought individually, they are fought between alliances.  They also have no chance of rebuilding their infra to a suitable level while on beige (if anyone is actually stupid enough to beige them).

 

It's a very poorly thought through change, probably brought about by the usual pixel huggers in that (not so) secret forum.  Other peoples views and detailed reasoning (see Tywins well structured posts backed up by actual figures) are ignored.

 

It's not ridiculous reasoning, look at the other numbers I posted. And the "without caps" does include the previous 20% soldier and 2:5 ratio of tanks to soldiers caps that existed.

 

You've still got a hefty advantage, it's just been lessened, which is good because it was flat out too much before.

[Dan77]

Here's another real example of a relatively new nation that I picked at random, and the top person in their war range:

 

 

Yeah, so like I said in my first post.  This change very much damages new players.  The whole reason given for changing the caps in the first place.

 

I'm tempted to get people to sit at a similar build to that and hit every new player as they come into their range just to show you how terrible an idea this was.

[Alex]

Yeah, so like I said in my first post.  This change very much damages new players.  The whole reason given for changing the caps in the first place.

 

I'm tempted to get people to sit at a similar build to that and hit every new player as they come into their range just to show you how terrible an idea this was.

 

That doesn't make any sense at all - the numbers I just showed you compare how a new player could've been attacked by someone with 66,500 soldiers (more than double their max capacity) vs now they can only have a little under 50,000 (still a lot more, but less) while the smaller nation's limit doesn't change.

 

Maybe you should look at the numbers I offered again. You can see, clearly labeled on the right hand side, the change in how many more units the larger nation has than the smaller one. It decreases (in this example) 27% for soldiers, 17% for tanks, 24% for aircraft, and 43% for ships. There's literally no downside for the smaller nation here.

 

EDIT: Fixed a typo

[Buorhann]

Wars need to end with not just ground attacks. Infra bombing sucks. Now we are forced to care about infra, let's build something we need up and have people just infra bomb it down... *wewt*

 

To argue against this, you built up Infra specifically to cap out military improvement slots, but you're perfectly fine with letting the Infra levels drop below afterwards without them having some sort of bond to force you to maintain the Infra.

 

I'm just saying...

Edited February 23, 2016 by Buorhann

[Dan77]

It's not ridiculous reasoning, look at the other numbers I posted. And the "without caps" does include the previous 20% soldier and 2:5 ratio of tanks to soldiers caps that existed.

 

You've still got a hefty advantage, it's just been lessened, which is good because it was flat out too much before.

 

errr no.  1% of population could be tanks before the change.  You've shown way, way more tanks than would have been possible in your examples.  Helps explain why such bad decisions are made.

 

Edit: This also applies to your subsequent post.  Your tank figures are wrong.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Dan77

[Warpool]

To argue against this, you built up Infra specifically to cap out military improvement slots, but you're perfectly fine with letting the Infra levels drop below afterwards without them having some sort of bond to force you to maintain the Infra.

 

I'm just saying...

 

 

I honestly wouldn't mind this update as much if wars ended with more than ground attacks. Eating 500-600 infra plane strikes for 5 days even at 2500 infra on 3 defensive wars will take you well below cap. Sending you down to nations with 5 cities and more military than you can have. Just because a few of us said to hell with rebuilding that is no reason to change that aspect of it.

 

Sheepy can you please respond to this? Is there no way to end a war before 5 days? It's not fun to sit there watching your hard built infra sink for 5 days, being in that position personally a few times. It makes wars far to one sided and not it's worse if you are left at 400 infra per city you can't even fight off the lower tier or if you have no money left then you can't build up to fight as you hit bill lock and can't make enough military to even raid.

[Buorhann]

Consequences for one's actions.  You raided a top military alliance and got Infra bombed for it.  You turned it around and raided the lower tiers of the alliance you initially picked a fight with because you know if you grow any higher, those same guys will just hit you again.  Now you're having a issue with all of this?

 

Why not seek a political way out from being infra bombed?  Like say...  an apology and non aggression pact for a certain time to the leader of the alliance you raid(ed).

[Harrison Richardson]

Maybe infra bombing will go away because it's too "scored earth."

 

Maybe losing nations will ask for peace.

 

Right now, "losing" a war has VERY few consequences.  This (perhaps unintentionally, I don't care) introduces some.  GOOD.

[Alex]

errr no.  1% of population could be tanks before the change.  You've shown way, way more tanks than would have been possible in your examples.  Helps explain why such bad decisions are made.

 

Edit: This also applies to your subsequent post.  Your tank figures are wrong.

 

Oh, you are correct, somehow I had missed the restriction was previously in place. I'll have to crunch some numbers again here, but this change actually benefits you then if you like tanks

Warpool I have to leave at the moment but I will return and respond to you.

[Dan77]

Oh, you are correct, somehow I had missed the restriction was previously in place. I'll have to crunch some numbers again here, but this change actually benefits you then if you like tanks

Warpool I have to leave at the moment but I will return and respond to you.

 

Remember when you agreed that Tywins figures and explanation was good?

 

It was almost like common sense had prevailed and that you were regaining some faith in your game mechanics which were absolutely fine as they were.  Instead, you appear to have concocted a new cap system based on wildly incorrect figures.

 

Please revert to how it was before.

[Spooner]

I'm a player with 1500 infrastructure per city generally. If anything this change helps me and my alliance greatly.

 

That said, this change was a poor one.

 

If you're concerned about submarine nations wrecking smaller players, you should have increased the rate at which improvements are destroyed. Look at how many people in your game are using this strategy -- around a dozen or so, tops? It's their chosen playstyle; it's not overpowered because they are giving up a severe opportunity cost to adopt this method of playing the game.

 

If it were such a great idea, more players would be doing it. I could knock my nation down to 500 infra per city to start raiding with PP. Hell, after the last war I was down there anyways, I wouldn't even need to waste the infra. Why didn't I do it? Because I considered what I would be giving up to do so, and chose to adopt an alternate strategy. ANY PLAYER COULD HAVE ADOPTED THEIR STRATEGY IF THEY SO CHOSE. The fact that it was a small, small minority playing the "PP way" should tell you something about the overall balance of their method. It was absolutely fine. If half of the game played like that, then yes, we could talk about balance.

 

They have found a non-overpowered, creative way to play the game to their liking. It's possible to counter this playstyle, but it's easier for the majority of players to simply complain about it & get it nerfed than to actually organize as an alliance apparently.

 

This change is piss-poor, no two ways around it. I'm not trying to be aggressive towards you personally; I'm trying to help you understand why this change you made was the wrong one.

 

I'm at 1500 infrastructure and have a relative-score advantage against some 10-city knucklehead sitting at 2000 infrastructure per city. I have more cities (more military), he has more infrastructure. It's not my fault he chose a different strategy than I do. He makes more money per day; I make less. I can war better than he can. There are trade-offs in place that each of us are making as players. Let us make those choices without artificial intervention.

 

The game would be a better one by adopting interesting new mechanics rather than constantly tweaking the formulas of what we have to buff/nerf various strategies. At the end of the day, it's a game, and this style of game-updates isn't an interesting one.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Syrup

[Lord of Puns]

I disagree, it's a small change that honestly won't do much other than increase the amount of flags/player ads you can get. If you think people were redeeming credits for $1,000,000 before to get $8,000,000 per month, you're wrong - people sell them on the market for even more than $2,000,000 a piece. Seriously go look at the market right now. Patient people will still be getting more than $40,000,000 per month, and honestly, that's not very much money. The top nations in the game are making almost $20,000,000 per day.  (????????)

 

 

The $8 million difference was more like at least $16,000,000, because credits sell for a hell of a lot more than the $1,000,000 you can redeem them for. And they're still very much capped.

500 resources for a credit is just another way to try and make them useful, because people are increasingly buying and using them less and less.

 

First of all, I'm within the top 4% of the game. Literally only 15-40 nations out of the 4k nations could even possibly make 20m a day stably. You're right about the cash, you will make more. But now credits will also be sold on the market for more. I'm guessing around the 3-4mil mark.

 

What you've done is created a system that people will no longer go to the market to buy credits but buy them on their own, smart but in order to make that worth while you've stretched the possible earnings by a shit ton. 20/40/60m per !@#$ing month is absolutely ridiculous. I don't understand why you even think that it's balanced at all.

[Warpool]

Consequences for one's actions.  You raided a top military alliance and got Infra bombed for it.  You turned it around and raided the lower tiers of the alliance you initially picked a fight with because you know if you grow any higher, those same guys will just hit you again.  Now you're having a issue with all of this?

 

Why not seek a political way out from being infra bombed?  Like say...  an apology and non aggression pact for a certain time to the leader of the alliance you raid(ed).

 

 

I can only hope you are playing dumb? I am talking about warring more than just raiding. It's common practice in wars to infra bomb, this coming from Mensa is quite the joke to read though.

[Prezyan]

I'm in the GPA, and even I think this is bad now.

[Nie Li]

Consequences for one's actions. You raided a top military alliance and got Infra bombed for it. You turned it around and raided the lower tiers of the alliance you initially picked a fight with because you know if you grow any higher, those same guys will just hit you again. Now you're having a issue with all of this?

 

Why not seek a political way out from being infra bombed? Like say... an apology and non aggression pact for a certain time to the leader of the alliance you raid(ed).

To be honest we are not complaining. But let's say there is another war. Pretty much nukeing a city with 1000infra gets it out of play. We really don't speak out for our selfs but for everyone. We raid a target and if we get countered we just infra bomb and get 3 nations to counter. Proplem would be that the defenders can't recruit their army because we just infra bomb and we won't get kills.the solution to the proplem would be loosing improvements more often than doing this stupid cap thingy.

[Filthy Fifths]

I'm in the GPA, and even I think this is bad now.

 

I'm just quoting this post because the implications this message has as a whole can not be ignored.