The problems with strength ratings.

[Magnanimus]

I have 12 cities and had the following military yesterday - 

Soldiers - 165,000

Tanks - 10,000

Planes - 972

 

3 guys with more than my military attacked me and reduced my forces to rubble.

 

I think this needs to stop. They made me loose 7000 tanks == 7000 Steel == $ 14 mil in 2 rounds of attack

 

What is the use of this game, If just being offline for 5-6 hours makes you loose half of your resource.

 

Above this, I can not use missiles or nukes against them as they have less than 800 Infra in their cities.

I think this game has become more about having cities rather than infra.

 

Infra is of no use until and unless you are facing -ve income or facing a cap on your military.

[Mayor]

 

I have 12 cities and had the following military yesterday - 

Soldiers - 165,000

Tanks - 10,000

Planes - 972

 

3 guys with more than my military attacked me and reduced my forces to rubble.

 

I think this needs to stop. They made me loose 7000 tanks == 7000 Steel == $ 14 mil in 2 rounds of attack

 

What is the use of this game, If just being offline for 5-6 hours makes you loose half of your resource.

 

Above this, I can not use missiles or nukes against them as they have less than 800 Infra in their cities.

I think this game has become more about having cities rather than infra.

 

Infra is of no use until and unless you are facing -ve income or facing a cap on your military.

 

 

The fact that you won't use nukes on an 800 infra city shows that you have no idea what they can be used for and protects my strategy.

[Wayne]

I think this game has become more about having cities rather than infra...

!@#$ me guys! I think it's finally starting to sink in. Weve had a breakthrough the light bulbs are starting to go off!

[Magnanimus]

Why Arrgh guys are complaining I understand coz they are milking this situation and they do not want it to change.

 

If I keep 90% max military for my cities and still can not do anything to defend my nation and loose half of my resources just so that I was offline for few hours, I think this game needs to re-think about it.

 

and something @Mayor - Nuking those guys will cost me more than what it would damage them. Stop behaving like politicians and accept what is the truth. I know you guys are enjoying this situation and I applaud you to find something in the system which has proved a success for you. But for the longevity of this game, it needs to change.

[Wayne]

Why Arrgh guys are complaining I understand coz they are milking this situation and they do not want it to change.

 

If I keep 90% max military for my cities and still can not do anything to defend my nation and loose half of my resources just so that I was offline for few hours, I think this game needs to re-think about it.

 

and something @Mayor - Nuking those guys will cost me more than what it would damage them. Stop behaving like politicians and accept what is the truth. I know you guys are enjoying this situation and I applaud you to find something in the system which has proved a success for you. But for the longevity of this game, it needs to change.

99% of the time you will lose to 3 guys if they hit first in a coordinated way. We took the decision to have an advantage in warfare, at the detriment of income. You choose the path of having higher daily income at the expense of security.

 

It seems to me that people want to have their cake and eat it. They want to be big and fat as well as being as strong as the purely mil guys! You can't have both. Stop being greedy.

[Mayor]

Man if only I had loads of standard income per day and a huge military, then raids would be really profitable!

[Anymou]

What about when infrastructure is destroyed to a point where an improvement can't be supported a random improvement is destroyed, excluding power facilities. If you can't sell infrastructure without first removing improvements because they can't be supported, then how can infrastructure be killed in war and the improvement still stand? 

Edited March 18, 2016 by Anymou

[Magnanimus]

99% of the time you will lose to 3 guys if they hit first in a coordinated way. We took the decision to have an advantage in warfare, at the detriment of income. You choose the path of having higher daily income at the expense of security.

 

It seems to me that people want to have their cake and eat it. They want to be big and fat as well as being as strong as the purely mil guys! You can't have both. Stop being greedy.

This is a ridiculous argument.

 

I sacrificed all my other improvements to increase my military to 90 % max and you still think I am having a cake.

It is the raiders who are whining about change in the game, coz they have found an easy way out to win in this game.

 

If having such high military count is not able to bare any fruit to protect your nation, I think it is necessary to think about the game mechanics.

 

This game is more about cities now, rather than infra or anything else.

[Magnanimus]

If keeping full military and lower infra in all cities is the only option in this game to be safe then I think this game needs to be folded up.

Edited March 18, 2016 by Magnanimus

[Mayor]

What about when infrastructure is destroyed to a point where an improvement can't be supported a random improvement is destroyed, excluding power facilities. If you can't sell infrastructure without first removing improvements because they can't be supported, then how can infrastructure be killed in war and the improvement still stand? 

Then I just raid you and destroy all your improvements as well causing more damage..

[Anymou]

Then I just raid you and destroy all your improvements as well causing more damage..

There is truth is that statement yes, however, this would affect not just you, or Arrgh! in general, this would be a change for everyone, economic building nations AND military building nations. I do see why you would be apprehensive about that kind of a change though, as it would seemingly ruin your ability to function in your current state as this wouldn't be allowed to happen:

 

http://i84.servimg.com/u/f84/19/33/50/85/infra-11.png

 

Making it much more difficult to raid at your current nation score of 1,150.10 when folk around you would have a fighting chance.

[Wayne]

This is a ridiculous argument.

 

I sacrificed all my other improvements to increase my military to 90 % max and you still think I am having a cake.

It is the raiders who are whining about change in the game, coz they have found an easy way out to win in this game.

 

If having such high military count is not able to bare any fruit to protect your nation, I think it is necessary to think about the game mechanics.

 

This game is more about cities now, rather than infra or anything else.

You have 1600+ infra in your cities. You have not sacrificed anything at all, you are still fat. Why should you be able to dominate economic wise as well as be able to compete with guys that are pure military? Being able to do both does not seem overly balanced to me.

[Mayor]

There is truth is that statement yes, however, this would affect not just you, or Arrgh! in general, this would be a change for everyone, economic building nations AND military building nations. I do see why you would be apprehensive about that kind of a change though, as it would seemingly ruin your ability to function in your current state as this wouldn't be allowed to happen:

 

http://i84.servimg.com/u/f84/19/33/50/85/infra-11.png

 

Making it much more difficult to raid at your current nation score of 1,150.10 when folk around you would have a fighting chance.

 

Not necessarily, I would just go full military and remove my resource/manufacturing/economy improvements. I could then raid whoever I pleased and wreck their improvements more easily.

[Fox Fire]

Implying this is a new problem.

Implying you're not against it for in game reasons.

Implying you aren't biased yourself.

1. Actually, I implied that it's a fundamental problem.

2. I'm not. I have nothing to gain or lose either way. I have a whopping 10 population. 

3. I'm not the one making suggestions to advance my in game political situation.

[Prefontaine]

3. I'm not the one making suggestions to advance my in game political situation.

 

The fact that you think this shows how devoid from the reality of the situation you are. Thanks for confirming. 

[Fox Fire]

The fact that you think this shows how devoid from the reality of the situation you are. Thanks for confirming. 

I'm not trying to sound like an !@#$ here, but this is quite obviously inspired by politics. Let's take a look at the OP:

 

"...what Arrgh has been taking advantage of..."

"...now with Arrgh highlighting how much of an issue..."

"...it is possible to stop what Arrgh is doing..."

"...link shows an arrgh city with 40 improvements..."

"...As I said Arrgh members will be adamantly against this change..."

"...My alliance reached a peace deal with Arrgh, so this suggestion is not political..."

"...now is because Arrgh is highlighting how skewed..."

 

Right.... Well I mean despite your claims, you sure went out of your way to make a suggestion post that is indeed, completely centered on the actions of Arrgh. It is a post specifically designed to hurt their play style, not anyone elses. You said "Arrgh" 7 times in your post without mentioning any other alliance, with the exception of the brief mention of your own. 

 

Sorry, but I'm not buying the cool aid here, buddy. 

[Phiney]

I think he is implying that this strategy of high city high improvement low infra is mostly sustainable by nations of this build preying on nations within the same score range.

 

Nations in the same score range largely have little chance to defend themselves since military strength is mainly tied to city numbers, and nation score is largely tied to infra numbers. This is the fundamental problem in many people's eyes in the quest for a reasonably fair war declaration range

 

The nations that are radically updeclaring as you call it are actually just declaring on nations more on par with their true military strength most of the time since military strength and nation score are largely unrelated. Additionally with the mechanics of the game heavily favoring the attacker this initial attack will go a long way toward victory, typically a crushing victory after the opening attack in a 1 v 1. and with the -25% downdeclare limitation it is difficult to find multiple militarized nations to counter that both have the military troops to do so while simultaneously being in declaration range for this proper response you speak of. It literally took test destroying multiple thousands of infra to be able to respond in a forceful meaningful way. I don't feel this should be a requirement to be able to craft a good response.

 

 

So in essence you answered you own question....with proper response it probably isn't sustainable but the mechanics of the game are very prohibitive of a proper response and is mainly supported by raiding inactives in a rotating gray cycle by nations more equal in score. It would be a tough sell to convince a reasonable person that most of these nations are hitting nations with at least 1.5x their score. Its probably a significant number (and I haven't looked into it so I very well could be wrong), but I'm willing to bet this isn't the case the majority of the time

 

But back on topic the updeclare really isn't the scope of this topic. (at the risk of speaking on behalf of pre) The topic at hand is largely over powered nations relative to their nation score peers being able to largely act with impunity at the current score formula. This is hard to justify as a fair system for a nation with twice the city count fighting someone. You can claim there is a proper response but from what I've seen it takes extreme counter productive measures to do so and if we take a step back and look at things objectively there probably wouldn't be many nations doing this if there wasn't a distinct advantage in doing so (and have been doing for some time now). That or the proper response is to follow a similar type build of purposefully stagnating your infra to keep a low infra score component. As a core fundamental principle I will disagree with a function or system that restricts game play options . I know I'm not a military wizard but these type of builds are largely impervious to conventional 100 infra = 2 improvement builds which is the standard designed model. If the standard designed model fails at a very high rate (against anything) I think it is reasonable to qualify this as an imbalance and perhaps the fundamental mechanisms should be evaluated

 

There is a fine line between using game mechanics to your advantage and using poor game mechanics to your advantage.

 

What actually defines a 'poor' mechanic is incredibly subjective but I think when you take everything else out of the equation it is hard to qualify a 1 v 1 fight where one nation can have twice as many cities and/or military as being fair.

 

Sure you can find examples where a proper downdeclare can be had and I can find an equal number of examples where a proper down declare can't be had. We shouldn't look at a few select cases where the system has demonstrated good gameflow results and use it to describe every case as a success.

Did everyone just ignore this? This is spot on.

[Spooner]

Did everyone just ignore this? This is spot on.

 

I wouldn't say "spot on". It's well-reasoned, for sure -- as are most of his posts. However, it misses the point that many others in this discussion also intentionally avoid:

 

Military strength is not only limited by the number of cities a player has (military caps), but also by what sort of military they can field. Higher-infra players have a higher income, allowing them to better field max tanks/planes in a military engagement than low-infra players. By ignoring the economic benefits of higher-infrastructure on war, players argue that the low-infra strategy is stronger than it really is.

 

There's a reason that all of you are building up to ~2000 infra per city (and not tearing down infra before war); it's because you know there are benefits to doing so. Actions speak louder than wars.

[Samdoo]

Did everyone just ignore this? This is spot on.

 

Cause no one can tell him he is wrong.. Just flame and attack the people posting and hope the post goes unnoticed. Sounds like it your first time talking about balance... The discussion always goes this way and is always the same few people saying but this would make the game not fun. The issue we are looking at is present in about 1% of the game population,(this 1% of game population is quite loud and active.) sheepy is assuming a bell curve is health design(its a bit better than straight linear.), there will be outliers accounting for 1% of his game. The impact this 1% of player population is having would show to be quite alarmed and should be what is looked at. 

[Spooner]

Cause no one can tell him he is wrong.. Just flame and attack the people posting and hope the post goes unnoticed. Sounds like it your first time talking about balance... The discussion always goes this way and is always the same few people saying but this would make the game not fun. The issue we are looking at is present in about 1% of the game population,(this 1% of game population is quite loud and active.) sheepy is assuming a bell curve is health design(its a bit better than straight linear.), there will be outliers accounting for 1% of his game. The impact this 1% of player population is having would show to be quite alarmed and should be what is looked at. 

 

Let me dispel the notion that Wayne doesn't know exactly what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.

[Wayne]

Let me dispel the notion that Wayne doesn't know exactly what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.

 

Don't tell em that.

Edited March 18, 2016 by Wayne

[Dan77]

Did everyone just ignore this? This is spot on.

 

I'm still waiting for someone to argue with the figures in my post

 

Seb tried but was proven incorrect.  Everyone else who wants change ignored it because the figures don't lie.

[Captain_Vietnam]

all of these poster terrible!

 

problem is war is too strong for smaller nations and neutral alliance roll by vile prefontaine

 

war need to reduce damage

 

soldier ground attack do 5% infra damage

air attack 7.5%

ship attack 2%

missile strike 10%

nuclear weapon 50%

 

action point figure double to make up for this issue!

 

now nuclear weapon usable? problem solve!

 

loot damage needs to be worth

 

can loot:

 

30% of money

10% of each resource 

 

improve damage.

1 improvement destroy per battle

air strike kill 3 improvements!

missile kill 5!

nuclear weapon kill 20!

 

improvements only change max. not amount per day

 

so small nations not blitz out of game!

[Prefontaine]

I'm not trying to sound like an !@#$ here, but this is quite obviously inspired by politics. Let's take a look at the OP:

 

"...what Arrgh has been taking advantage of..."

"...now with Arrgh highlighting how much of an issue..."

"...it is possible to stop what Arrgh is doing..."

"...link shows an arrgh city with 40 improvements..."

"...As I said Arrgh members will be adamantly against this change..."

"...My alliance reached a peace deal with Arrgh, so this suggestion is not political..."

"...now is because Arrgh is highlighting how skewed..."

 

Right.... Well I mean despite your claims, you sure went out of your way to make a suggestion post that is indeed, completely centered on the actions of Arrgh. It is a post specifically designed to hurt their play style, not anyone elses. You said "Arrgh" 7 times in your post without mentioning any other alliance, with the exception of the brief mention of your own. 

 

Sorry, but I'm not buying the cool aid here, buddy. 

 

Again you continue to prove your ignorance on the matter.

 

Yes, and you ignore the parts where I talk about doing this strat myself. Trying to get this changed a year ago. And let me bold the quote you've already used to make my exact point for me. Thank you for varifying that this is a problem that I've known about, fought against over a year ago, and am knowledgeable about. But with Arrgh HIGHLIGHTING how this mechanic is poorly balanced, it's much easier to have an open discussion about it. So once again I thank Arrgh, and you specifically for helping me make my case. Without your help in showing what I've known for the last year to be the case on a broad scale we would not be able to have the possibility of fixing the problem.

[Phiney]

I wouldn't say "spot on". It's well-reasoned, for sure -- as are most of his posts. However, it misses the point that many others in this discussion also intentionally avoid:

 

Military strength is not only limited by the number of cities a player has (military caps), but also by what sort of military they can field. Higher-infra players have a higher income, allowing them to better field max tanks/planes in a military engagement than low-infra players. By ignoring the economic benefits of higher-infrastructure on war, players argue that the low-infra strategy is stronger than it really is.

 

There's a reason that all of you are building up to ~2000 infra per city (and not tearing down infra before war); it's because you know there are benefits to doing so. Actions speak louder than wars.

 

Wait are you forgetting the entire point of raiding is to make money a different way? You are supposed to raid to make money. The game is based around growing, not staying the same size, THATS how the game was made to be played. The variety in tactics are supposed to be different ways of getting bigger. Raiding is supposed to be an alternate way to make money, to grow. The options then are making money through high infra, or staying low infra and making money through raids and growing your city count that way. Higher infra does not really allow you to field a better military at all after about 1k infra, it just allows you to make money and resources without raiding. You're coming up with this flimsy argument and forgetting that raiding is still supposed to net you equal or more amounts of resource and money just at greater risk and greater required activity, making your whole argument about having more cash to play with when you're bigger void. 

 

Edit: this is terribly written because i'm knackered but you get the point.

Edited March 18, 2016 by Phiney