The problems with strength ratings.

[Kastor]

Well Pre, I'm not a raider and this is a bad idea. We cannot change the mechanics every single time something goes "wrong" in this game. This isn't game breaking, there are several ways to fix this. All you guys need to stop being whiney little brats and find ways to fox this. Most of the time, if you keep a good amount of military and are active, raiders won't hit you. But when you keep nothing, it's obvious that a raider sees you as a juicy target for a good 3-4m.

 

Get over it, fix it with the player base.

[Prefontaine]

if you keep a good amount of military and are active, raiders won't hit you.

 

 

Clearly they're only fighting nations with almost no military, that's why they are at the top of the kills leaderboards. I can say for sure they were attacking people with near max military for when we were going toe to toe with each other. 

 

And to the rest of your asinine "points", simply because a game is out does not mean when a bug, or massive imbalance is discovered does not mean you ignore it. That will kill the longevity of your game. But then again your opinion is baseless and without actual experience on the matter, so I didn't expect it to be remotely accurate. GJ getting me to reply though, 2/10.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Prefontaine

[Andrezj Kolarov]

The problem is that P&W clearly have a lot of players who are underage and have short attention spans, thus all the "I only raid because I'm bored" BS.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Andrezj Kolarov

[Peter Quill]

LOL, Kastor got declared on. He didn't attack someone; someone attacked him.

[Andrezj Kolarov]

LOL, Kastor got declared on. He didn't attack someone; someone attacked him.

Yeah I saw that.

[Glorton]

These threads are my favorites. We cant handle arrgh so lets go whine of the forums. i get it tho, wayy cheaper and easy to do this then actually dealing with us in game. Even tho people have beat us before. PP got rolled by alpha because alpha was actually coordinated and had military on hand. Never raided them again.... Mensa, T$, BK, Even GPA ffs have enough military on hand to warn us off. its not impossible guys. Unless all this shit is just to hard for you guys to do and understand. Just buy some !@#$ military! All you need to do. Losing money is not the end of the world.

 

these suggestions are pointless because it will just ruin the game for everyone else. your trying to use game mechanics to solve the raiding problem but guess what. the mechanics will affect us all! not just the raiders. even if this was implanted, People still wont buy military, still be unprotected, still being raided to nothing. So obviously this isnt a game mechanic issue. We seen it from the last change. until sheepy can make a mechanic that will motivate you to go to war, just deal with the raiders. Just a part of the game anyways

Edited March 16, 2016 by Glorton

[Andrezj Kolarov]

 

until sheepy can make a mechanic that will motivate you to go to war, just deal with the raiders. Just a part of the game anyways

I've already seen it done in another nation sim called "Nations". Basically there's "Missions" where you send your military forces to fight various AI enemies (gangsters, rebels, criminals etc) and if you are successful you get a bunch of money and resources. Of course people might also say that isn't ~real~ war because it's against computer enemies.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Andrezj Kolarov

[Wayne]

 

Clearly they're only fighting nations with almost no military, that's why they are at the top of the kills leaderboards. I can say for sure they were attacking people with near max military for when we were going toe to toe with each other.

 

And to the rest of your asinine "points", simply because a game is out does not mean when a bug, or massive imbalance is discovered does not mean you ignore it. That will kill the longevity of your game. But then again your opinion is baseless and without actual experience on the matter, so I didn't expect it to be remotely accurate. GJ getting me to reply though, 2/10.

Wasn't the barney between Arrgh and TEst a 'war', you did after all make a thread acknowledging the tickling. It shouldn't then come as a surprise to people that we were going after built accounts. Also Arrgh have been at 'war' with numerous alliances for the past few months and those at the top of the boards are pretty much the most active guys that do the majority of the lifting for Arrgh. Until recently Mensa dominated the leaderboards using Arrghs 'tactic' of low and wide. They just haven't gone to the extremes Arrgh have. They chose to sacrifice score for more money during the peace times. Yet the tactic is the same. Minimise your score while maximising your army. Mensa get acknowledged as being one of the toughest, if not the toughest alliance around.

 

You won't get a balance in this game. You'll get advantages and disadvantages. The most imbalanced part of the game imo is the first strike advantage. There is no way to counter it. Other then praying the RNG gods are kind to you. Whereas people can and have countered low infra, max army accounts. The fact you need to go an arse about tit way to accomplish it does not mean it's a bug or an imbalance problem. Probably poor design.

 

As I've already stated, the game has advantages and disadvantages, the player then needs to weigh up what he wants. If you have massive amounts of infra (money) without adequate protection. Don't be surprised when guys that would rather, take then make, come knocking at your door.

 

I've already said in other threads of this nature, that military should have more weight on score total. Being one of these low and wide raiders now (I was while in Mensa too, I just made the choice of having 1300-1500 infra due to the protection Mensa could give and the lack of targets, meaning I wasn't able to raid as much so needed higher income to offset more peaceful times), my opinion still hasn't changed on this matter.

 

If anything the current system is limiting people's playstyles to two, either big and economic or small and war. There is no way to be a bit of both. This current system is very all or nothing.

Nothing stopping people being high infra, high producing, raid accounts. A dangerous life to live and very expensive, but if that floats your boat, you can do it. No matter what you do to the game, there will always be a build that is the most efficient for certain play styles.

 

Mensa in my opinion have the most 'balanced' accounts. Enough infra to make money and resources, but low enough in score to be a pain in the arse to fight. Pretty much the best of both worlds or as close to as we can get with this poorly designed game.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Wayne

[Ogaden]

You realize that due to the last change most of us aren't even low infra anymore right?

 

This, like the previous change, would help us raid, since now "hard" targets for us can't downdeclare (we're even further out of range!) and soft targets are further downrange.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Ogaden

[Ogaden]

Arrgh: I've tried liking you, but I just can't anymore. You guys are humongous dicks that exploit a flaw in the system and then !@#$ about how 'we should adapt to the system'. I'm sorry but not everyone wants to play like how you people play. Why does Sheepy have to listen to a few people whining when nearly everyone else wants to change?

Aren't you the guy who was rejoicing at us being hit by Mensa? o_O

Edited March 16, 2016 by Ogaden

[Prefontaine]

You realize that due to the last change most of us aren't even low infra anymore right?

 

This, like the previous change, would help us raid, since now "hard" targets for us can't downdeclare (we're even further out of range!) and soft targets are further downrange.

 

Apparently you do not understand. This change is not to stop raiding. This change is to make it so you're fighting strength is a more accurate representation of your score. 

[Ogaden]

Apparently you do not understand. This change is not to stop raiding. This change is to make it so you're fighting strength is a more accurate representation of your score.

Well apparently the rest of the people in the thread didn't get your narrative memo, since this thread is literally addressed to us.

[Ogaden]

I've got an idea, how about if your alliance contains a capitalized A and a double lowercase r you have a 25% penalty to attacks, that should solve the problem

[Crust]

Well apparently the rest of the people in the thread didn't get your narrative memo, since this thread is literally addressed to us.

If you have 90% objecting saying "this is about us!" it's not a wonder it starts being a topic about that group. It's not about you specifically, it's just that you guys happen to be playing that way. It would be a flawed system no matter what alliance did it.

[Ogaden]

If you have 90% objecting saying "this is about us!" it's not a wonder it starts being a topic about that group. It's not about you specifically, it's just that you guys happen to be playing that way. It would be a flawed system no matter what alliance did it.

This IS about us, the system has been like this since P&W was created, yet all of a sudden, it's in crisis.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Ogaden

[Prefontaine]

This IS about us, the system has been like this since P&W was created, yet all of a sudden, it's in crisis.

 

If you had read my posts, you would understand the wrongess of your statement. I've been against this for over a year. I've done what you're doing. Arrgh has merely helped provided a spotlight on the problem to highlight it and make people realize that it is a problem. Thank you for assisting me in bringing this change. Your help is appreciated.

[Ogaden]

If you had read my posts, you would understand the wrongess of your statement. I've been against this for over a year. I've done what you're doing. Arrgh has merely helped provided a spotlight on the problem to highlight it and make people realize that it is a problem. Thank you for assisting me in bringing this change. Your help is appreciated.

Pre, you are basically the only person in this thread with honest motives in debating this. Maybe me too to be honest, I don't really care anymore, change whatever you want.

[Phiney]

Problems like this dont tend to get solved in games like this until they're highlighted by a large group, remember all the military strength changes? They happened because it was a necessary change after seeing the results on a large group. Happens all the time with tons of mechanics. As Pre said, this isn't to stop raiding in anyway, it to make it so the people you're raiding no longer have 0 chance to fight back should they decide to build a military, or so militarised nations with more infra arnt still !@#$ed regardless as they have 4 or 5 less cities. Raiding is great and a necessary part of the game. Co-ordinated raiding? even better, you'll have a much better chance to do well, as many have said co-ordination should be encouraged, don't see why that should only be defensive co-ordination. Also, 800 - 1000 infra per city at 12+ cities is still very much low infra. No way in hell those cities would have been affordable without much more infra than that.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Phiney

[Ogaden]

The biggest change for me would be reducing damage scaling. Immense triumphs lead to you losing basically nothing and your opponent losing basically everything.

 

The real reason we've done so well lately is that we hit hard and hit fast and wipe out most of the military forces that could be directed against us within the first couple hours of war. We declare on nations with larger militaries all the time, and coordinate to take them down.

[seabasstion]

If anything the current system is limiting people's playstyles to two, either big and economic or small and war. There is no way to be a bit of both. This current system is very all or nothing.

 

this as absolutely the truth. 

[Dan77]

My score is 1489.23

 

It is made up from:

619.23 - military

300 - cities

40 - projects

530 - infrastructure

 

I have 800 infra in 11 cities and 900 in the other 2.  It's low but not ultra low.  I wouldn't be able to maintain a high enough army if it was lower due to the recent (stupid) changes.  My build is clearly military focused.

 

With the way the current mechanics work, I can be declared upon by a nation with a score up to 1985.64

 

In the interests of comparing fairly and the current obsession people have with people attacking others with less cities let's assume someone has the same number of cities, the same number of projects and exactly the same military as me.

 

That leaves them 1026.41 score to use on infrastructure.  They could therefore have 20528 infra and still attack me (an average of 1579 infra per city).  That is a significant amount of infra per city.  They would also have more improvements and a better income than me.  All whilst maintaining an identical military.  Hardly defenceless is it?!

 

If you need over 1500 infra, that's your choice but you're just being greedy really and why should you expect the existing game mechanics to change just to suit your greed.  Keep a good standing military if you don't want to be raided.

 

The amount of money floating around in the game is bad for it.  It widens the gap between between players and in all games like this when you join and have no hope of getting anywhere near the majority of the existing players it is hard to have any kind of new player retention.  The obsession with high infra is based on greed and the fact that people have been able to get away with it for too long.  Sheepy has said before that there is too much money in the game and that's largely thanks to people focusing on infra.  Adapt.

[Dan77]

If anything the current system is limiting people's playstyles to two, either big and economic or small and war. There is no way to be a bit of both. This current system is very all or nothing.

 

this as absolutely the truth. 

 

I've just demonstrated that you can have 1579 infra per city and match military.  That is very much a bit of both and is a typical Mensa build (or at least it was).

[Peter Quill]

Aren't you the guy who was rejoicing at us being hit by Mensa? o_O

I tried liking you before that happened.

[seabasstion]

i have said this before but perhaps a better mechanism to determine 'infra' score is to calculate it based off of improvements used compared to actual infra amounts. in a vacuum it probably isn't responsible from a mechanics side to have a system where a nation with a very large increase in used improvements compared to their counterparts presuming a 'fair' battle range is being sought after

 

https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=8347

 

this nation is a good example and serves as the 'extreme' case in arrgh (since this discussion seems to revolve around them right now). arrgh as a whole averages 6.3 more improvements used per city compared to what their infra allows. the linked nation averages more than 26 more improvements than what their infra can support (a total of 365 over 14 cities). 

 

when you consider wars like this:

https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=102188

 

at the time of the declaration mang balong could only have 272 improvements. this is in pretty stark contrast to the 531 that mayor is able to support. to put this in perspective, someone would need 26550 total infra to have 531 improvements the 'legitimate' way. there are 162 nations in the game that have this amount of infrastructure. the smallest score of anyone in this 162 nations is 1685. They can only down declare by 25%. this means they can down declare to 1263.75 nation score which means there are a grand total of zero nations in the game that can currently fight mayor if they were to play the game (that im assuming) as designed where 100 infra = 2 improvement slots.

 

i cant fault mayor though - this is incredibly smart of him and of course this isn't typical of arrgh or many other people in this game, but extreme cases typically serve to highlight a problem so it is worth noting.

 

now some would argue you could just coordinate attackers to take down calondia. well first of all that would only serve his purposes better - it would only further lower his score range which broadens his target array. additionally from a logistics standpoint, the most 'powerful' score range that can currently attack calondia is 1464. the nations with the highest infra under 1464 have 22100, 22100, and 22000 respectively. this means at most they have 442 improvements when following a 'legit' build of 2 improvements per 100 infra. this is 89 improvements less than what mayor can support as well as they have fewer cities which is the real bottleneck for military support. furthermore there is a built in disadvantage in attacking since they would require low military score to be able to even declare. if they build up before declaring they get out of range. if they declare then do a 'double buy' they would still be very far behind a max military 14 city build. 

 

i get that there is the argument that they would be running a net revenue at this infra level, but the resource economy alone would be enough to keep this nation afloat by selling on the market or to alliance mates

 

with all that said i dont have a problem with what arrgh does, but to say it isnt taking advantage of what is perhaps a less than ideals score range is a bit naive otherwise there wouldn't be an alliance wide observance of more improvements being utilized than what a city supports which is currently at 371 arrgh cities out of 584 total ; 153 of which have 10 or more improvements than what is supported by their infra (26% of all arrgh cities)

 

infra has little effect in regards to military power in this game - it is mainly a function of improvements used. if the goal is to have a score range where an appropriate range of nations can both attack you and be attacked upon having infra as the driving factor of score would not be the way to go. 

[seabasstion]

I've just demonstrated that you can have 1579 infra per city and match military.  That is very much a bit of both and is a typical Mensa build (or at least it was).

 

there are only 32 nations in the game that have 13 cities or more and less then 20528 total infra. 5 of them are arrgh so really only 27 nations that would fit this description. 

Edited March 16, 2016 by seabasstion