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The problems with strength ratings.


Prefontaine
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Sheepys mechanic is not broken, it's just poorly designed.  A broken mechanic implies that it's not working as intended.  The mechanic is working, it's just not having the outcome some think it should.  How should Economy builds vs Military builds be weighted?   This I feel is the real issue, people expect too much. 

 

What are the disadvantages of being a low level raider?  I lose more money a day paying my bills then I ever made each day in Mensa due to upkeep, I need to be more active and online frequently, I'm closer to my army limit, meaning one good kicking and I'm totally out the fight, thanks to Sheepys new mechanic.  I need to constantly rebuild and restock. The advantages?  It's fun living on a knifes edge and on a good day I can make a tidy profit, I can be pretty invincible unless drastic actions from the other side are taken.

 

What are the disadvantages of being an high infra econ player?  You are punching above your weight in terms of score, making you a big fat juicy target.  If you are too fat, even holding onto a full military may not be enough to save you.  What are the advantages?  Making dollar and growing by doing nothing at all, you don't need to be as committed to the game and if you feel safe enough, you can leave for a week and come back to the game richer then when you left!  You can last longer in fights due to your infra cushion, you have the means to fight without relying heavily on a war time market.  Once you are too fat, you are pretty much out of harms way.

 

The balance is broken, the time and effort = reward mechanic is all borked.

 

I'm all for having the option and there being this two ways to play thing, I'm just against the only way to beat someone playing a certain way is to play it their way thing. I actually think pre's suggestion might be a bit over the top and a middle ground of just halving infra score and doubling city score would do. Do you not think it's a bit skwiffy when one person who sells down to play it your way (imagine he hadn't sold down and was just like that, just a bigger version of what you guys are doing) can beat your top 4 people in one fell swoop? If there was another alliance like arrgh but where each person had 2 more cities, they could just sit on you forever and you couldn't do shit, it's just you guys are at the top of your play style food chain so effectively invincible. Raiding would still be a fine option it would just not be so easy to do so without repercussion, raising the risk meanwhile your targets would be more juicy so you could gain a lot more dosh per war.

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it is literally a spreadsheet numbers game

 

if pre can sell down and own the top of arrgh why is this even a thread? I literally didn't even pay attention to what happened

 

god you people are !@#$ing dumb. you have the information and come to worse conclusions than I do and I don't even pay attention

 

I guess FF was actually being lenient by attributing it to malevolence

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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.

 

Still waiting for someone to argue with these figures.  It's easy to beat Arrgh and have a decent income at the same time.  I don't know why we have to keep telling people how (it's really not in our interests).

 

If you choose to be at 2k infra + per city with the same number of cities as me then why should you expect to be able to attack me?  That would clearly be unfair.  People can hit me who can already have both an economic and military advantage over me at the same time.  Is that really not enough?

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I'm all for having the option and there being this two ways to play thing, I'm just against the only way to beat someone playing a certain way is to play it their way thing. I actually think pre's suggestion might be a bit over the top and a middle ground of just halving infra score and doubling city score would do. Do you not think it's a bit skwiffy when one person who sells down to play it your way (imagine he hadn't sold down and was just like that, just a bigger version of what you guys are doing) can beat your top 4 people in one fell swoop? If there was another alliance like arrgh but where each person had 2 more cities, they could just sit on you forever and you couldn't do shit, it's just you guys are at the top of your play style food chain so effectively invincible. Raiding would still be a fine option it would just not be so easy to do so without repercussion, raising the risk meanwhile your targets would be more juicy so you could gain a lot more dosh per war.

 

There are other ways to make life hard for us, you won't 'beat' us, just like we won't 'beat' you, defeating us in battle is just one way to make our style harder.  We rely heavily on the market, why not use some political clout in embargoing us on a mass scale, try to raise our cost of living, while at the same time making more of an effort to protect your resources and cash.  Kick inactives to give us raiders more targets without stepping on alliances toes. Have players build standing armies, instead of spending 90% of the time unarmed.

 

Changing mechanics in my opinion should be the last resort.

 

oh and Pre held us down, due to us not being even close to fully built... had we been built up more, he would have struggled to have been as effective.

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☾☆

Warrior of Dio

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DAILY REMINDER: Everyone can follow the same strategies in this game. Nothing prevents you from going high cities/low infra. If you feel the strategies of some players are strictly dominating other strategies, LEARN AND ADAPT.

 

Kemal.  I think it's time for you to summon the Inci.  Give these nice people something to really moan about.  Arrgh will look like saints next to them.

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make nuke powerful

 

nuke not worth it

 

could make them strong to fix game?

or just wait until people have enough infra to make using a nuke worth it. just because there are shiny toys available doesn't mean you need to play with them.

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I have noticed two things that are problematic in this discussion:

 

1) The people in favor of change;

Not addressing the fact that they could simply not build high infrastructure that doesn't repay itself for months in a war/nation simulator.

Not addressing Dan's calculations that they could be easily countered by someone as strong as them

 

2) The people against change:

Not addressing the fact that players could sustain themselves by raiding inactives and small alliances that don't have the means to protect themselves, because they've got lower amount of cities & not a lot of infra.

 

 

And both aren't suggesting anything that allows both types of players to maintain their playstyle with advantages and disadvantages alike.

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-Have some way to protect your money better (Moneybags is one step at least)

-Have some way to rebuy lost infra at reduced cost (Having max infra be your current infra before you lose it in a war)

-Reduce steel-to-tank cost

-Nerf battle damage to make troops feel more valuable in a war (So wars don't end within 1-2 battles)

Edited by Hooves
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I have noticed two things that are problematic in this discussion:

 

1) The people in favor of change;

Not addressing the fact that they could simply not build high infrastructure that doesn't repay itself for months in a war/nation simulator.

Not addressing Dan's calculations that they could be easily countered by someone as strong as them

 

2) The people against change:

Not addressing the fact that players could sustain themselves by raiding inactives and small alliances that don't have the means to protect themselves, because they've got lower amount of cities & not a lot of infra.

 

 

And both aren't suggesting anything that allows both types of players to maintain their playstyle with advantages and disadvantages alike.

Nothing in this change prevents raiders from raiding.

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Nothing in this change prevents raiders from raiding.

 

What are you going to do when players with obnoxious amounts of infra, and therefore humongous war chests, prey upon the small nations with much lower financial resources? Same BS.

 

What needs to be done is adopting scores that are linear in the COST. If you spent 20m on cities and 20m on infra vs 10m on cities and 30m on infra, the score should be the same.

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-Have some way to protect your money better (Moneybags is one step at least)

-Have some way to rebuy lost infra at reduced cost (Having max infra be your current infra before you lose it in a war)

-Reduce steel-to-tank cost

-Nerf battle damage to make troops feel more valuable in a war (So wars don't end within 1-2 battles)

The real issues!!

 

It`d be interesting if battles paid less and beiging paid more (this would nerf raiding active players, as now the raider has to worry about someone shipping out the loot, talk about some real pirates.)

This is a gov type. 

This would`t be as much an issue if stomping wasn't the case i think.

I'd like more options to beige your opponent, the endless alliance wars aren't fun to watch.. cause like we agree wars are over in 2 battles (even on this scale.)

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What are you going to do when players with obnoxious amounts of infra, and therefore humongous war chests, prey upon the small nations with much lower financial resources? Same BS.

 

What needs to be done is adopting scores that are linear in the COST. If you spent 20m on cities and 20m on infra vs 10m on cities and 30m on infra, the score should be the same.

 

Missiles and or nukes comes into mind, let alone as a deterrent and in use. The damage done to their infra can be in proportion to the losses on the other side in conjunction with unit costs. 

 

While your idea is good in thought, it's worthless in practice. Proportional costs in infra versus cities is reflecting score is probably the worst idea suggested here. First off, cities CAN NOT be destroyed. How do you know that infra they bought isn't the 10th time they've bought it? Cities ARE effectively the sole measure of the max military you can produce (caps are too small to make a meaningful impact). Your score is the sole determining factor on who you can and cannot fight. If your score isn't not a reflection of your potential military capabilities then it is not doing its job. A warchest, standing military, preparation, style of play is all on the player at that point. 

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Pre:

 

I don't think you can appreciate what I said without seeing the numbers for yourself, and you are obviously not going to do that. So a question to you:

 

You were down to 1000 infra very recently. You build back to 2000 infra. Why? If Arrgh's strategy is so OP, why don't you employ their technique?

 

All I can see is whining about a system that works, and offering systems that absolutely wouldn't work.

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Pre:

 

I don't think you can appreciate what I said without seeing the numbers for yourself, and you are obviously not going to do that. So a question to you:

 

You were down to 1000 infra very recently. You build back to 2000 infra. Why? If Arrgh's strategy is so OP, why don't you employ their technique?

 

All I can see is whining about a system that works, and offering systems that absolutely wouldn't work.

How do you not understand this it's been Repeated again and again. He doesn't disagree with arrgh doing what they're doing he's done it himself plenty. The issue is with the game allowing people with 5 or 6 more cities to be able to score match. If that weren't the case arrgh doing what they are would be fine. Not against raiding or declaring up or looking to hit unmilitarised targets at all. Keep going on that one.

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Still waiting for someone to argue with these figures.  It's easy to beat Arrgh and have a decent income at the same time.  I don't know why we have to keep telling people how (it's really not in our interests).

 

If you choose to be at 2k infra + per city with the same number of cities as me then why should you expect to be able to attack me?  That would clearly be unfair.  People can hit me who can already have both an economic and military advantage over me at the same time.  Is that really not enough?

I guess it depends what you call decent though. At 1500 infra/city or so and max military, you do make a positive income, maybe 150-200k per city. But look at the costs - the cost of buying up that army, having a decent war chest for alliance wars, and a rebuilding fund for alliance wars, and all that would take maybe 3-4 months to save up for on that kind of income. Guardian (or Mensa's) last 4 wars were about 3 months apart, and that's not including the Arrgh/PP wars since those probably would not have happened if we had max military. So going that route, an alliance that wants a strong defence and still have wars ever now and then might never have a chance to buy new cities.

 

That's why I think it would be reasonable to tweak the numbers a little. On the other hand, I have to admit it's nice to be able to recover from the first round of an alliance war without having to worry about nations with more cities than you and more infra/city than you redeclaring, so you have to consider that too. I still think making war slightly less destructive would be good. Right now an alliance that wins a war might still get set back by 1 month assuming it's not a complete curb stomp, and one that loses by about 2-3 months. Ideally, I think those should each be cut roughly by half. So maybe reduce the benefits of high infra levels and have better incomes at low infra levels, maybe allow nations to steal small amounts of infra on immense triumph ground attacks rather than only destroying, stuff like that, while also tweaking the score range a little.

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I kept a full military when I was in Mensa. I was making 1.4 million a day with 1500 infra. I was able to grow ok and hold a decent war chest. The odd raid here and there on inactives was a welcome addition to the kitty. It's not massive amounts of cash, but there are other ways to top up your income. War was probably my most profitable time!

 

I agree with you on the number tweaking though. I think that would have been a better starting point then nerfing infra score.

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He's actually right. None of my cities have 40 improvements anymore, most of them are signifigantly lower. At the same point, Improvements also generally drain my income rather then supporting my nation. Especially Commerce, which becomes a money sink once you go lower then 1k infra. 

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How do you not understand this it's been Repeated again and again. He doesn't disagree with arrgh doing what they're doing he's done it himself plenty. The issue is with the game allowing people with 5 or 6 more cities to be able to score match. If that weren't the case arrgh doing what they are would be fine. Not against raiding or declaring up or looking to hit unmilitarised targets at all. Keep going on that one.

 

I would like an exact example for this 5-6 more city score match, because it looks like a comparison between two players in which one has a very suboptimally high infra per city from a defense point of view.

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I would like an exact example for this 5-6 more city score match, because it looks like a comparison between two players in which one has a very suboptimally high infra per city from a defense point of view.

Nation 1:

12250 infra (875/city)

14 cities

183750 soldiers

17500 tanks

1260 aircraft

2 projects

1651.37 score

 

Nation 2:

12000 infra (1500/city)

8 cities

120000 soldiers

10000 tanks

720 aircraft

10 ships

5 missiles

2 projects

1239.00 score

 

Although for the most part, Arrgh seems to be raiding nations ranging from maybe 2-4 cities smaller to 1-2 cities bigger.

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what if we made it so you can only attack people with the exact same number of cities and rather than giving us military improvements we just give everybody a certain amount of military they're allowed per each city

 

that way every nation can be exactly the same and every battle can be a stalemate and mass-member alliances will always have an advantage purely through numbers, because that's what's fair and balanced

 

and since nobody will use their military anyway because they'll all disband everything in favor of keeping just missiles on hand which do next to nothing to increase your score while costing next to nothing compared to having an actual army on hand, everybody can have tons of infra and always be protected from attacks because they can do far more damage just by lobbing a missile every 4 points than by actually utilizing the war system

 

isn't that fun guys? don't you want to give sheepy 100 bucks a month in tokens to be able to grow your nation ad nauseum? he needs to eat "more than ramen", don't you know. and since arrgh are clearly just arguing in bad faith despite spending all the time and energy coming up with numbers that are ignored we can be sure that the people paying sheepy's bills are not at all influencing him based on the real life financial factor. i've definitely never seen that happen in any games before that we're trying to replicate here, nope not at all

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