Regarding the new score formula

[Foltest]

https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=10799

 

Inb4 he rebuilds and ruins my point, but right now Jacob Hansen is sitting at 630 score.

 

 

He has 12 cities - so 630 score doesn't sound so unreasonable, right? Until you look a little closer at his nation.

 

 

0 total infra.

0 soldiers/ships/nukes/missiles/tanks/aircraft/military of any kind.

 

 

A *completely* destroyed nation, by all metrics, still well within a reasonable war range.

 

 

 

 

 

So outside of any kind of 'Arrgh deserves this' rhetoric or 'sheepy is targeting us' rhetoric - I feel like this is an unintended result of the change in the score formula. How can keeping an obliterated nation within range to continually be kept at war and literally unable to fight back or fall out of range be an intended part of the game?

 

I think the intention of the score change was appropriate, you shouldn't be able to abuse the score system to your advantage in the lower tiers. In that same spirit, I think some tweaks need to be made - several of the changed values in the new score formula were doubled in an attempt to balance the game. I would propose a revisiting of these values and perhaps instead of keeping them doubled, reduce them to 1.1-1.5x their original value.

 

 

 

Sorry if that's confusing, but basically I think UPN-Arrgh's war demonstrated that while Arrgh can no longer abuse the system to destroy small nations with little fear of reprisal, large nations can now abuse it to continuously keep people in an unwinnable (and even un-fightable) war which distorts and disrupts the spirit of the game.

[Ogaden]

Stop being butthurt Corvo, everything is wonderful

Edited April 12, 2016 by Ogaden

[LordRahl2]

WHAT?  An unintended consequence of an overacting mechanics change?  There is no way this could have been foreseen!

[Alex]

Why do you think he should have lower than 630 score? A 12 city nation shouldn't be in the range of 2-3 city nations, even if they have no infrastructure, because infrastructure is so cheap to build. The largest nations that can downdeclare on him have 7-9 cities. If one of these nations declared war on him, he'd have a relatively easy time rebuilding and defeating them.

 

And while he could be theoretically pinned down forever without outside funds, that's where the Politics part of the game comes in. There are likely a multitude of options available for any nation that isn't universally hated and is looking for protection/rebuilding funds.

[LordRahl2]

that's where the Politics part of the game comes in. There are likely a multitude of options available for any nation.

 

Precisely the same thing could have, and was, said about the pre-farmernerf mechanics.

[Ogaden]

From my conversations with Sheepy regarding this issue, basically while what we were doing was a flaw in the game, large downdeclares forever is working as intended.

 

So suck it up shrimpies, you should have been bigger

Edited April 12, 2016 by Ogaden

[Glorton]

that's where the Politics part of the game comes in. There are likely a multitude of options available for any nation that isn't universally hated and is looking for protection/rebuilding funds.

 

 

srsly sheepy????? Now you say the problem can be solved by in-game politics??? like allot of us were saying before the changes lol

 

What changed your mind?

[Ogaden]

srsly sheepy????? Now you say the problem can be solved by in-game politics??? like allot of us were saying before the changes lol

 

What changed your mind?

 

It's only bad if we do it

[Foltest]

Why do you think he should have lower than 630 score? A 12 city nation shouldn't be in the range of 2-3 city nations, even if they have no infrastructure, because infrastructure is so cheap to build. The largest nations that can downdeclare on him have 7-9 cities. If one of these nations declared war on him, he'd have a relatively easy time rebuilding and defeating them.

 

And while he could be theoretically pinned down forever without outside funds, that's where the Politics part of the game comes in. There are likely a multitude of options available for any nation that isn't universally hated and is looking for protection/rebuilding funds.

 

Politics shouldn't be the answer to unbalanced game mechanics, just like it wasn't pre-score change.

 

If you can't provide a viable way for a losing side to wage war, then what's the point of fighting or playing the game at all? We've all seen how "politic better" turned out for other similar games.

 

 

 

There's a balance to be struck between the old formula and the new - doubling the values has demonstrably shown that war ranges put the losing nations, even with 0 infra and military, still well within range of viable opponents. While I'm not suggesting you should be able to beat this 12 city nation down into the 100 score range, I would at least allow nations like his to drop another 100-200 score as their "floor".

[Foltest]

Also while I am trying to advocate for a change that may help your alliance, I would like to ask Arrgh and its affiliates to leave this thread alone or contribute actual evidence rather than antagonizing the admin.

 

I would also like to ask Sheepy to truly consider the logic behind the thoughts I've proposed, rather than emotionally evaluate it based on Arrgh or others provocations.

Edited April 13, 2016 by Corvo

[Ayayay]

The change was far to drastic and other far less radical options were offered. I fear, however, that we will have to wait until the next war before the mechanics will change. It's beyond obvious that this will allow alliances to be kept in perma-war until they bow down to unrealistic demands with no real recourse. Previously alliances were forced to peace out of wars as quickly as possible after the initial beatdown in order to minimize their losses while maximizing enemy loses and this is no longer the case. Alliances now have the ability to extract whatever they want from the losers and time will tell if they want to spend the political clout they have to do it.

 

Sheepy, it's not to late to change it, this situation is dangerously similar to what I pointed out would happen with the city range suggestion. While this is not as drastic as that one was, it should still be pushed back a bit to level the playing field. I'm not saying revert the change, I'm merely saying it should be balanced better.

[Alex]

From my conversations with Sheepy regarding this issue, basically while what we were doing was a flaw in the game, large downdeclares forever is working as intended.

 

So suck it up shrimpies, you should have been bigger

 

This isn't a large downdeclare - nations with 9 cities declaring war on nations with 12 cities is not a "downdeclare." It costs ~$357,446.69 to build 500 infrastructure in a city, for less than $5,000,000 this player could have 500 infrastructure in every city, and a reasonably sized army. For a little more, that reasonably sized army could have more tanks, aircraft, and ships.

 

The score ranges aren't intended to work when a nation has 0 infrastructure and 0 military, like this extreme example here. The only way that would even be possible is if you were all limited in how much infrastructure or improvements you could purchase in a day, which I'm sure you wouldn't like. My point is, with the score changes the way they are now, this nation could declare war on a 5 city nation. Do you think that's fair? No one should; but the circumstances of doing such a thing involve having no infrastructure and no military, so it seems at least fairer to me that the 5 city nation (less than half this nation's cities) would start out with a significant advantage in the war, that if they're lucky they could maintain (perhaps by starting out with a blockade.)

 

I'd like to emphasize again that if it requires a 12 city nation with 0 everything to show me how "awful" this change was, then it's not that awful. This nation is still only vulnerable to perhaps the bottom of its normal war range, and prior to the score range we had a much larger imbalance. There were no "0 everything" nations used as examples before, there were real players actively trying to play the game, some with 13 cities that could declare on nations with as little as 7 cities. And you'd like to return to that system because it was a lot of fun for you, I get it, but you're going to have to try a little harder than making snide comments and posting extreme edge cases where even the previous system would not have been better (for exactly the reason I've shown; previously this 12 city 0 infra 0 military nation would have been in the range of even smaller nations, it could've declared war on up to five 4-5 city nations, and then for less than $5,000,000 been able to stomp them all to bits with ease, with them never having a chance. Is that what you want, and what you think is fair?)

 

The change was far to drastic and other far less radical options were offered. I fear, however, that we will have to wait until the next war before the mechanics will change. It's beyond obvious that this will allow alliances to be kept in perma-war until they bow down to unrealistic demands with no real recourse. Previously alliances were forced to peace out of wars as quickly as possible after the initial beatdown in order to minimize their losses while maximizing enemy loses and this is no longer the case. Alliances now have the ability to extract whatever they want from the losers and time will tell if they want to spend the political clout they have to do it.

 

Sheepy, it's not to late to change it, this situation is dangerously similar to what I pointed out would happen with the city range suggestion. While this is not as drastic as that one was, it should still be pushed back a bit to level the playing field. I'm not saying revert the change, I'm merely saying it should be balanced better.

 

I'm not opposed to balance changes, and I've stated that numerous times. I told the community I wished to see how the changes would impact the game before making any more hasty decisions. That's exactly what we're doing here.

[Avruch]

Why do you think he should have lower than 630 score? A 12 city nation shouldn't be in the range of 2-3 city nations, even if they have no infrastructure, because infrastructure is so cheap to build. The largest nations that can downdeclare on him have 7-9 cities. If one of these nations declared war on him, he'd have a relatively easy time rebuilding and defeating them.

 

And while he could be theoretically pinned down forever without outside funds, that's where the Politics part of the game comes in. There are likely a multitude of options available for any nation that isn't universally hated and is looking for protection/rebuilding funds.

 

Why not just have wars automatically end (in "surrender" if you want) when the disparity between the two sides exceeds whatever you want the maximum fair range to be. That way you don't need to worry about someone with zero infra declaring a war and then building it, improvements and an army. 

Edited April 13, 2016 by Avruch

[LordRahl2]

Politics shouldn't be the answer to unbalanced game mechanics, just like it wasn't pre-score change.

 

If you can't provide a viable way for a losing side to wage war, then what's the point of fighting or playing the game at all? We've all seen how "politic better" turned out for other similar games.

 

 

 

There's a balance to be struck between the old formula and the new - doubling the values has demonstrably shown that war ranges put the losing nations, even with 0 infra and military, still well within range of viable opponents. While I'm not suggesting you should be able to beat this 12 city nation down into the 100 score range, I would at least allow nations like his to drop another 100-200 score as their "floor".

 

He actually quadrupled the relative score value of cities

[durmij]

Paradox has a balance mechanic were nations get a small base income no matter what their circumstances. Maybe cities should have a similar mechanic, to allow a player to recover on their own. Something big enough to help them restart from a wipe on their own, but small enough to not matter once they are built up.

It's kind of tangential, but still relevant.

[Ogaden]

The thing I always have to remember is how Sheepy doesn't actually play this game.

 

Sheepy let's duplicate this experiment in test server, I will be a 5 city nation and you will be a 12 city nation.  You can have as many improvements and as much money and resources as you want, you can have 30 million of each, let's see how fast you kick my ass starting from 0 and I attack you

Edited April 13, 2016 by Ogaden

[Hereno]

Why do you think he should have lower than 630 score? A 12 city nation shouldn't be in the range of 2-3 city nations, even if they have no infrastructure, because infrastructure is so cheap to build. The largest nations that can downdeclare on him have 7-9 cities. If one of these nations declared war on him, he'd have a relatively easy time rebuilding and defeating them.

 

And while he could be theoretically pinned down forever without outside funds, that's where the Politics part of the game comes in. There are likely a multitude of options available for any nation that isn't universally hated and is looking for protection/rebuilding funds.

 

ogaden is right here - a 3-5 city advantage in being able to rebuy troops isn't going to let you overcome someone who starts the war with at least one type of advantage over you (probably ground advantage)

 

the ground/air advantages you have are basically designed to make it so you can shut someone down easier by attacking first. it encourages aggression and teamwork. which is fine. but in combination with the way it takes us days and days to rebuy troops, it's relatively easy to just avoid beiging and keep someone at war forever, perpetually unable to rebuild themselves, even with infinite resources.

 

while i sorta agree with you wrt politics and whatnot, as a player who is universally hated, i feel like we should be able to still play the game. one way you could perhaps fix this balance is make it so offensive slots cannot be immediately filled after they're used. like each war still lasts 5 days at max, or whatever it is i don't remember, but you can only declare 5 total offensive wars per month, regardless of if you peace them out the next day or they last forever. it slows down raiding significantly, vastly limits the power of a single juggernaut nation to destroy alliances, and keeps people from getting beaten down forever unless the opponent truly has ridiculously superior numbers. more importantly, it makes it so you can't keep people out of beige forever, which the whole point of was to let them rebuild their militaries back up to size and get to start fresh again. it's a simple fix that doesn't require you to go back on the score change, but you should still test it out for a while before implementing it.

[Ogaden]

The thing I always have to remember is how Sheepy doesn't actually play this game.

 

Sheepy let's duplicate this experiment in test server, I will be a 5 city nation and you will be a 12 city nation.  You can have as many improvements and as much money and resources as you want, you can have 30 million of each, let's see how fast you kick my ass starting from 0 and I attack you

 

Update on this, things aren't looking good over at Baatopia so far

[Arthur James]

**I just realise the military become so influencial to determine how you become top tier from middle tier.*

[Clarke]

You do realize this was already possible under the last score formula. 

I can say in the last war I had to avoid getting beaten down by nations with more score than me while I had more cities than them. 

However if the same were to happen now I think I would stand a better chance and be less dependent on worrying about who's score range I am in because overly powerful nations I feared would now be out of range. 

 

If someone can't escape to beige well that wasn't going to be pretty under the last score formula either. But considering the more powerful nations are out of range it's definitely not as bad as before. 

 

 

Sheepy let's duplicate this experiment in test server, I will be a 5 city nation and you will be a 12 city nation.  You can have as many improvements and as much money and resources as you want, you can have 30 million of each, let's see how fast you kick my ass starting from 0 and I attack you

Well it's questionable as I don't know if you can stay in range with a strong military, you would probably need to purposely not build out of his range. Jacob was sent to beige early on so if Sheepy was not to recover then he can have time as Jacob did to recover on beige and plan an attack. 

 

 

 

The change was far to drastic and other far less radical options were offered. I fear, however, that we will have to wait until the next war before the mechanics will change. It's beyond obvious that this will allow alliances to be kept in perma-war until they bow down to unrealistic demands with no real recourse. Previously alliances were forced to peace out of wars as quickly as possible after the initial beatdown in order to minimize their losses while maximizing enemy loses and this is no longer the case. Alliances now have the ability to extract whatever they want from the losers and time will tell if they want to spend the political clout they have to do it.

 

Sheepy, it's not to late to change it, this situation is dangerously similar to what I pointed out would happen with the city range suggestion. While this is not as drastic as that one was, it should still be pushed back a bit to level the playing field. I'm not saying revert the change, I'm merely saying it should be balanced better.

 

On the contrary I think everyone complaining here has no clue and once the next global war happens will see that the system is better than before. 

 

Previously alliances were forced to peace out of wars as quickly as possible after the initial beatdown in order to minimize their losses while maximizing enemy loses and this is no longer the case. 

Alliances now have the ability to extract whatever they want from the losers and time will tell if they want to spend the political clout they have to do it.

Lets say its 210 nations vs 40 nations such as UPN and co vs Arrgh, you know I actually think I have evidence of similar stats prior to the score formula change that the smaller side didn't recover from to fight back and were extracted from.

I could literally go on all day about how everything everyone is complaining about already existed but under the new score formula change the side that has to recover has a better ability to do so but obviously not if the numbers are heavily against it as it has always being and still is. If the numbers aren't on your side then tough shit. 

Edited April 13, 2016 by Clarke

[Foltest]

1. Jacob can't do anything to anyone in a 0 infra and 0 military state. I'm not even sure if he generates cash with 0 infra.

 

2. Rather than continually trying to tweak the score formula to protect smaller nations from unfair fights - why not just implement an auto-end feature to wars if someone exits the upper range via building up.

 

-- To explain: If Jacob declared war on a 600 score nation and then built all his cities back up and restocked his military - it would push him out of the upward end of the 600 score war range and thereby end his war. The reason you don't want wars to end from sinking too low in score is because you don't want to let people out of war early just because you're winning.

 

3. If the current score formula doesn't let you sink low enough to avoid perma-ZI / Zero Military then it can be safe to say it needs re-tweaking. Facing larger opponents that have been knocked down during a war is just par for the course. The game has to have balance, not just favor one side or another.

[Clarke]

1. Jacob can't do anything to anyone in a 0 infra and 0 military state. I'm not even sure if he generates cash with 0 infra.

There's other ways to rebuild using a nation and they have an alliance bank. This point you made isn't all that relevant.

 

 

2. Rather than continually trying to tweak the score formula to protect smaller nations from unfair fights - why not just implement an auto-end feature to wars if someone exits the upper range via building up.

 

-- To explain: If Jacob declared war on a 600 score nation and then built all his cities back up and restocked his military - it would push him out of the upward end of the 600 score war range and thereby end his war. The reason you don't want wars to end from sinking too low in score is because you don't want to let people out of war early just because you're winning.

I think the score formula is tweaked enough but it's not totally terrible on top of the existing changes. 

 

 

3. If the current score formula doesn't let you sink low enough to avoid perma-ZI / Zero Military then it can be safe to say it needs re-tweaking. Facing larger opponents that have been knocked down during a war is just par for the course. The game has to have balance, not just favor one side or another.

 

No, "low enough" is purely relative. A nation could have being perma-ZI prior to the changes. You can still face larger opponents in any tier, especially in the low tier that have being knocked down. 

[Ogaden]

There's other ways to rebuild using a nation and they have an alliance bank. This point you made isn't all that relevant.

 

I think the score formula is tweaked enough but it's not totally terrible on top of the existing changes. 

 

No, "low enough" is purely relative. A nation could have being perma-ZI prior to the changes. You can still face larger opponents in any tier, especially in the low tier that have being knocked down.

I'm currently instructing Sheepy on how this is not the case

[Clarke]

What is not the case?

[Ogaden]

How impossible his situation is. 7 city advantage penalty