Seeking Testers - War Policies + Score Formula Change

[Rozalia]

It's not an issue - war ranges still extend +75% and -25%, so smaller nations can gang up on larger nations but can't be picked off by the larger nations. Additionally, there's the +10 rank exception in war ranges, which only goes one way -- you can declare on anyone in the next ten ranks above you regardless of score discrepancies, but they can't declare war on you unless you're in their war range.

 

https://politicsandwar.com/leaderboards/

 

How long have those people held those positions? Back before the war where I had significantly more score (3000+) than I have now I couldn't even target all of them (and the ones I could just barely) and with how people drop in score quickly enough (fighting other nations with similar score) those nations at the top are in fact virtually untouchable. So you target Arrgh but refuse to target those untouchables? People will wonder why. 

[Woot]

Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that raiders are picking on new players. Raiders have no reason to pick on new players.

 

I think Sheepy knows: his 5-city nation has no military, no alliance protection, dispenses massive amounts of loot, and yet only 4 wars were declared against him in the last 30 days. Back in January-February he built a small military (60% max soldiers, 20% max air and tanks) and it was enough of a deterrent that he didn't get looted for more than a month, and that was only because I spotted the massive money hoard he was sitting on and attacked him.

 

People don't seem to remember how things work down in the brand new score ranges. Below about 300 score, which takes most people 1-2 months to reach, the game is flooded with incredibly easy targets. Dozens of old inactive nations with lots of cities and zero military that pop out a few hundred grand or 400 steel every time you raid them. There's so many of them that it's an exhausting chore just to look through them all. No alliance, purple inactivity, no military, page after page of them. Why would any raider want to get into an actual fight? Why would any raider fight an active new player, who isn't going to have anything worth taking? Anybody who has the slightest bit of military, activity, or protection is simply not worth looking at.

 

There's no way to fix the fact that clueless noobs who don't know how to play the game are ultimately going to be beaten at it. All we can do is give them a grace period. And it's plenty long enough right now. New players don't face any serious organized threats like Arrgh until at least 2 months in.

[seabasstion]

https://politicsandwar.com/leaderboards/

 

How long have those people held those positions? Back before the war where I had significantly more score (3000+) than I have now I couldn't even target all of them (and the ones I could just barely) and with how people drop in score quickly enough (fighting other nations with similar score) those nations at the top are in fact virtually untouchable. So you target Arrgh but refuse to target those untouchables? People will wonder why. 

 

correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't the score update address this concern?

 

looking at the top 10 - here are the number of nations that can declare on them as of the current system

 

current system

300 spartans - 44

mirrania - 68

grand central - 71

eastern sweden - 86

numars - 98

rapture - 98

scotland - 115

lower kalla - 123

Nueva Granada - 126

the byzantine empire - 138

 

new system

300 spartans - 105

mirrania - 73

grand central - 98

eastern sweden - 112

numars - 93

rapture - 223

scotland - 237

lower kalla - 140

Nueva Granada - 156

the byzantine empire - 230

 

this is an average of 50 potential enemy nations more for each top 10 member that can now declare on them. only one of these nations (numars) shows a decrease in enemy exposure with a drop from 98 to 93.

 

additionally when you look at the mega infra no military builds that have been mentioned (i'll choose the highest current nation score with a military score <10) https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=9551

 

they currently have a score of 3738 and can have 167 nations declare on them. under the new score formula they will have a score of 2696 and can have 413 nations declare on them. that is almost 2.5x more nations will be exposed to

 

 

as a whole im very perplexed about the general narratives of these threads. if the people that are in opposition value to updeclare more compared to the downdeclare curb stomp wont having a bigger reach up to the top be more beneficial to their strategy? 

 

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i believe the intent of this score change is focused on trying to prevent situations where a large city advantage can be had which corresponds with a huge built in advantage on the down declare - it doesn't do anything to hurt the updeclare model at all.

 

if we use dan77's nation as an example (since it has been referenced several times in these threads already) we see that as of today's nation stats he can down declare 1125.75 nation scores and updeclare to 2626.75

 

here are the city counts of nations in range current score 

8 cities: 9

9 cities: 38

10 cities: 114

11 cities: 115

12 cities: 105

13 cities: 85

14 cities: 58

15 cities: 35

16 cities: 18

17 cities: 7

18 cities: 0

19 cities: 0

20 cities: 0

 

total = 584

avg infra = 21213

 

here are the city counts of nations in range new score

8 cities: 0

9 cities: 8

10 cities: 21

11 cities: 42

12 cities: 46

13 cities: 50

14 cities: 53

15 cities: 47

16 cities: 24

17 cities: 14

18 cities: 13

19 cities: 4

20 cities: 2

 

total = 324

avg infra = 27537

 

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so yes, while dan would be losing 260 targets in total he would be exchanging this quantity for quality. 205 of these 260 targets have 11 cities or less so if targeting bigger, more profitable builds with higher infra is his strategy i fail so see why there is staunch opposition by claiming it allows for big nations to beat up on small nations and untouchable nations to keep untouchable. 

 

not only is the big nations to beat up on small nations mathematically false (205 smaller city targets from dan have been eliminated), but his target list favors bigger nations that he can now hit with reach into the 20 city builds

 

if we count from 13 cities (his city count) and up, old score he has 203 targets. new score he has 207 targets. so again, taking what has been said in these threads as factual i'm genuinely perplexed why there would be such staunch opposition from the raiding groups as you have a much more valuable reach, even being able to access high militarized whale tier nations. for no military whale tier nations they have almost half the active game that can hit them now.  

 

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so tl;dr - 

 

saying untouchable nations are futher untouchable is false as they are more easily accessible now, the valuable updeclare reach is lengthened at the expense of the lower unprofitable region that the opponents of this change themselves say they dont prefer to target. coupled with the 40% buff i am struggling to see how this is negative for raiding nations aside from a larger pool of similarly built/military capable nations would now be in score to be able to defend/counter . i can understand if this is the reasoning behind the opposition since you would be losing a lot of built in protection, but the opposition-provided reasoning behind much of the opposition when you look at the practical application of it is largely false and/or misinterpreted in my opinion.

 

edit: and to say that i am for this change for self serving reasons would be a false statement. a score change like this opens up a lot of additional exposure both for myself and the 'spartan' build. i actually view this change as bad for my game and am in the process of making the appropriate changes to better suit a strategy with my existing build in this new score system. 

Edited March 29, 2016 by seabasstion

[Magnanimus]

I still think it is a good idea to hide the war policies.

 

It adds an extra bit of strategy to Alliance v Alliance wars.

[Andrezj Kolarov]

I still think it is a good idea to hide the war policies.

 

It adds an extra bit of strategy to Alliance v Alliance wars.

Especially if spying can let you find out what war policies a nation is using, suddenly Spies are much more useful (same could be done with Perks if they ever get implemented, gather info with Spies to find what perks a nation is using).

[George Clooney]

When the test server was first annouced many months ago, I went and made 300m in cash and held 9 treasures.  Please, don't assume that the test server is anything like the actual server we play on.  The dynamics are totally different, not to mention people often get masses of resources and cash handed to them by Admin. 

 

Those that 'try the game and don't like it' have zero bearing on me and my raids, as well as those 'super arrgh nations', to get in to our range, you'd need to be at least 3-4 months old.  So once more, stop with the utter bullshit that our tactics of low score/strong military impacts on new players.  It does not.  It's the failing of the game from the off that causes the retention issues. It's the slow pace of the game, from starting an account to completing all you need to do in a day takes about 15 minutes, after the first day, it's 2 minutes.  The game does not grab peoples attention.

 

It's not my responsibility to play the game for other peoples enjoyment.  If they are not willing to seek the protection needed, then they deserve to be raided.

 

Creating a nation to raid for a bit isn't brain surgery, and the results are universal, whatever you want to think.  The hypothesis was, "the proposed changes don't severely hamper raiding".  My testing proved the hypothesis correct.  Obviously the much more limited number of potential targets on test means at some point I'll probably run out of targets if I choose not to raid people over and over again, but on the production server I won't run into the problem for a very long time if ever.

 

I didn't suggest your tactics have an impact on new players, just player retention generally insofar as some of your people raid and re-raid targets.  Also, your members are FAR from the only people re-raiding people.  "Farming" is destructive to the game, at whatever the score level.

 

You now have a richer neighborhood to plunder with the score increases,  Smile.