Regarding the new score formula

[Spooner]

The point where its hard to get the upper hand when you have a huge disadvantage in military?

Ogaden didn't need to show you that, we have had two years of that.

 

He's saying that this change exacerbated the effect much more than it was previously. It's now much cheaper and logistically feasible to keep an alliance rolled permanently after war.

 

Don't be dense, Clarke.

[Alex]

Sheepy is essentially suffering from 5 different problems which make it an unwinnable war for him:

 

1: Planes are OP

I have 450 planes.  That's not that many, Sheepy can build up to 1080 planes, but due to infra rebuy caps and the very slow rebuy rate of planes, he can only buy about 100 a day, which is way too few to avoid an immense victory to blow up all his planes, and every airstrike I can take out 1000 tanks, half his daily rebuy.

 

2: Air Superiority is OP

Ground combat is entirely reliant on how many tanks you have.  If you have lost air superiority your opponent can already bomb the shit out of your tanks, making your tanks half as powerful is overkill at that point.  In order to overcome my 6000 tanks, sheepy would need to build 10,000 tanks due to my air superiority, but he can't even get to 2000 because of my airstrikes.

 

3: Immense Triumphs are OP

Even though Sheepy's rebuy rate is fast and in a few days he can overwhelm me, he doesn't have a few days, because every time I get an immense triumph he suffers 100:1 losses, and my rebuy rate is only half his, not one hundredth.

 

4: He can't do this forever

Because war resources are severely limited, and Sheepy is choosing not to just magic in resources for him to fight with, he cannot afford to spend 2000 steel a day for very long.  I can because I'm not spending anything, the only thing I'm using prodigiously is ammunition and gasoline.  I've yet to replace a tank.

 

5: I can keep this up forever

The only thing that could foreseeably end this conflict for me is when I finally run out of ammunition from blowing up his stuff

 

I'm inclined to agree with you, and I think this is the direction that we should proceed with balancing the war system. Reducing the decisiveness of immediate victories will mean it takes a little longer for wars to be decided (good) and make things a little less lop-sided.

 

A couple of initial thoughts:

 

I like reducing the chances of getting an Immense Triumph victory. I think the best way to implement this would be some sort of "Underdog Bonus" based on the discrepancy between score or military sizes. This would make it so that two equal sized nations would be relatively unaffected; when a much larger nation is fighting a much smaller nation, it won't be so easy for the larger nation to get ITs.

 

I think reducing the Air Superiority bonus, and changing it from halving tank effectiveness to reducing tanks that can be used (like Ground Control does with Aircraft) will be beneficial. That'll make it easier to counter a superior air force, and you won't have to have so many tanks die to do it.

 

I think reducing Tank's steel costs is a good idea. I'm not convinced on 0.5 each, but I think starting with even 0.75 would be okay.

 

Lastly, I think increasing military per day purchases for all units (except ships) would be beneficial. For example, we could keep Factories at 50 tanks/day, but lower their cap to 200 each, and change Air Force Bases to 16/ea and let you recruit 4 aircraft per AFB each day. That would mean you could double buy 1/2 your max in tanks and aircraft, which would help nations come back from losing wars.

 

Again, just initial thoughts that come to mind. Probably not everything everyone wants, but in my opinion, a good and gradual start.

[Clarke]

He's saying that this change exacerbated the effect much more than it was previously. It's now much cheaper and logistically feasible to keep an alliance rolled permanently after war.

 

Don't be dense, Clarke.

There hasn't being any evidence of that, and if Arrgh is considered evidence then there is plenty of evidence prior to the change. 

Edited April 14, 2016 by Clarke

[Spooner]

There hasn't being any evidence of that, and if Arrgh is considered evidence then there is plenty of evidence prior to the change. 

 

The evidence is in the new war mechanics, dipshit.

 

Lower-infra (destroyed) nations are now easily kept in a higher score-range for easier war re-declaring. Furthermore, sub-1000 infra nations can't recruit military as quickly as they could previously. Naval attacks offer a cheap way to destroy infrastructure slots (especially with Tactician). These changes work together to make it exceptionally easy to keep a defeated alliance under your boot.

 

Keep up mate.

[Spooner]

 

 

I like reducing the chances of getting an Immense Triumph victory. I think the best way to implement this would be some sort of "Underdog Bonus" based on the discrepancy between score or military sizes. This would make it so that two equal sized nations would be relatively unaffected; when a much larger nation is fighting a much smaller nation, it won't be so easy for the larger nation to get ITs.

 

You wouldn't need to add an underdog bonus, would you? It seems like reducing the % chance of getting an IT would have the same mathematical effect of "boosting" the lower-score player. Perhaps I'm missing what you're explaining here.

 

The rest of the ideas seem alright though. I don't feel strongly either way, personally. The cost of tanks is a bit ridiculous though, imo -- I agree they should be lowered to encourage more frequent wars.

 

One of the main problems of this game currently is that war is ungodly expensive, and it doesn't bring any real benefit other than satisfying our boredom. At the end of the day it's always a net loss for both parties (RL wars sometimes end up this way, sometimes not).

[Foltest]

I'm inclined to agree with you, and I think this is the direction that we should proceed with balancing the war system. Reducing the decisiveness of immediate victories will mean it takes a little longer for wars to be decided (good) and make things a little less lop-sided.

 

A couple of initial thoughts:

 

I like reducing the chances of getting an Immense Triumph victory. I think the best way to implement this would be some sort of "Underdog Bonus" based on the discrepancy between score or military sizes. This would make it so that two equal sized nations would be relatively unaffected; when a much larger nation is fighting a much smaller nation, it won't be so easy for the larger nation to get ITs.

 

I think reducing the Air Superiority bonus, and changing it from halving tank effectiveness to reducing tanks that can be used (like Ground Control does with Aircraft) will be beneficial. That'll make it easier to counter a superior air force, and you won't have to have so many tanks die to do it.

 

I think reducing Tank's steel costs is a good idea. I'm not convinced on 0.5 each, but I think starting with even 0.75 would be okay.

 

Lastly, I think increasing military per day purchases for all units (except ships) would be beneficial. For example, we could keep Factories at 50 tanks/day, but lower their cap to 200 each, and change Air Force Bases to 16/ea and let you recruit 4 aircraft per AFB each day. That would mean you could double buy 1/2 your max in tanks and aircraft, which would help nations come back from losing wars.

 

Again, just initial thoughts that come to mind. Probably not everything everyone wants, but in my opinion, a good and gradual start.

 

I'll count this as a good first step in the right direction.

 

Thanks for listening Sheepy, this is a big part of why people choose PnW over other games.

[durmij]

I think reducing Tank's steel costs is a good idea. I'm not convinced on 0.5 each, but I think starting with even 0.75 would be okay.

 

Lastly, I think increasing military per day purchases for all units (except ships) would be beneficial. For example, we could keep Factories at 50 tanks/day, but lower their cap to 200 each, and change Air Force Bases to 16/ea and let you recruit 4 aircraft per AFB each day. That would mean you could double buy 1/2 your max in tanks and aircraft, which would help nations come back from losing wars.

These would be fantastic changes. My only suggestion would be to change tanks to 240 and make the daily recruitment cap 60 a day. That way the overall potential ground strength of a city stays about the same.

 

And that 11% reduction in plane potential could actually go a long way in balancing airstrikes as well.

 

Now if only I can convince you that ships also need to have a 4 day recruitment time as well my defcon/standing army math will finally make sense. 

[Ayayay]

Steel is burned too fast, and is too difficult to replace, and a losing military runs out of steel too quickly compared to other war resources.  I would reduce the steel used in tanks to 0.5 or even 0.25

>implying that will ever happen

[Hereno]

if we could target aircraft with missiles it would be a quick and easy way to nerf aircraft without changing the rest - basically an air attack against tanks, but against aircraft. make it kill like 10% of the opponent's planes... something scale-able

 

increasing steel output modestly seems like a better alternative to having tanks be worth less than a single unit of steel

 

i don't really like the idea of reducing casualty numbers - it's just that when you outnumber your opponent a lot, you basically just trounce them. it would make more sense, to me, to just make it so no battle goes more than, say, 5:1 casualty ratio

 

all of these are really easy to implement and solve 90% of those problems, along with just making immense triumphs more unlikely, but i feel like doing that would be awesome for raiding because you can just sit there and moderate attack over and over and get tons of money. although i guess you can already do this by just not sending all of your ground forces in the first place, so maybe we should make the change

[Etgfrog]

Might I recommend that wars ending in timing out puts a nation into beige if they have lost more score worth of military and infrastructure then the other side.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Etgfrog

[Hansarius]

I'm inclined to agree with you, and I think this is the direction that we should proceed with balancing the war system. Reducing the decisiveness of immediate victories will mean it takes a little longer for wars to be decided (good) and make things a little less lop-sided.

 

A couple of initial thoughts:

 

I like reducing the chances of getting an Immense Triumph victory. I think the best way to implement this would be some sort of "Underdog Bonus" based on the discrepancy between score or military sizes. This would make it so that two equal sized nations would be relatively unaffected; when a much larger nation is fighting a much smaller nation, it won't be so easy for the larger nation to get ITs.

 

I think reducing the Air Superiority bonus, and changing it from halving tank effectiveness to reducing tanks that can be used (like Ground Control does with Aircraft) will be beneficial. That'll make it easier to counter a superior air force, and you won't have to have so many tanks die to do it.

 

I think reducing Tank's steel costs is a good idea. I'm not convinced on 0.5 each, but I think starting with even 0.75 would be okay.

 

Lastly, I think increasing military per day purchases for all units (except ships) would be beneficial. For example, we could keep Factories at 50 tanks/day, but lower their cap to 200 each, and change Air Force Bases to 16/ea and let you recruit 4 aircraft per AFB each day. That would mean you could double buy 1/2 your max in tanks and aircraft, which would help nations come back from losing wars.

 

Again, just initial thoughts that come to mind. Probably not everything everyone wants, but in my opinion, a good and gradual start.

 

I think these sounds like reasonable first steps for improving the war system.

The suggested underdog bonus I am not so certain about as I believe a larger nation should be able to beat a smaller one, though perhaps not so effortlessly as it does now.

If there's an underdog bonus it should probably be based on city count.

 

I would also like to echo those who has suggested that air planes should suffer losses in other scenarios than just air vs air.

Why not even make an AA battery improvement which makes attacking aircraft lose 1% to 10% of attacking airplanes before the battle starts or something.

[Clarke]

The evidence is in the new war mechanics, dipshit.

 

Lower-infra (destroyed) nations are now easily kept in a higher score-range for easier war re-declaring. Furthermore, sub-1000 infra nations can't recruit military as quickly as they could previously. Naval attacks offer a cheap way to destroy infrastructure slots (especially with Tactician). These changes work together to make it exceptionally easy to keep a defeated alliance under your boot.

 

Keep up mate.

 

The main issue is does it help keep an alliance under your boot and the answer is no, it's purely speculative and not based on any comparative data. 

Edited April 15, 2016 by Clarke

[Spooner]

The main issue is does it help keep an alliance under your boot and the answer is no, it's purely speculative and not based on any comparative data. 

How can you possibly be so dense.

 

The mechanics clearly result in a given outcome. Look at how military now functions, and you'll have your answer.

[Clarke]

How can you possibly be so dense.

 

The mechanics clearly result in a given outcome. Look at how military now functions, and you'll have your answer.

An outcome you have no evidence of but assume to be true. 

[Moreau]

I think these sounds like reasonable first steps for improving the war system.

The suggested underdog bonus I am not so certain about as I believe a larger nation should be able to beat a smaller one, though perhaps not so effortlessly as it does now.

If there's an underdog bonus it should probably be based on city count.

 

People with more cities are penalised enough as it is: It should not be based on city count. 

 

I would also like to echo those who has suggested that air planes should suffer losses in other scenarios than just air vs air.

Why not even make an AA battery improvement which makes attacking aircraft lose 1% to 10% of attacking airplanes before the battle starts or something.

 

I happen to agree with the first part, but AA improvement just gives defenders an unfair advantage that disincentivises offensive wars. 

 

Edited April 16, 2016 by Moreau III

[Foltest]

An outcome you have no evidence of but assume to be true. 

 

The math itself, combined with Ogaden's demonstration, is the evidence.

[Spooner]

An outcome you have no evidence of but assume to be true. 

 

Sheepy: "Airstrikes now have a small chance to be shot down by ships"

 

Syrup: "Oh, now it looks like airplanes are a bit less powerful than before"

 

Clarke" "Why are you leaping to assumptions, you're coming to a conclusion with absolutely no evidence or data to back up your claims"

 

Give me a break, dude. You can't even multi properly.

[Clarke]

Sheepy: "Airstrikes now have a small chance to be shot down by ships"

 

Syrup: "Oh, now it looks like airplanes are a bit less powerful than before"

 

Clarke" "Why are you leaping to assumptions, you're coming to a conclusion with absolutely no evidence or data to back up your claims"

 

Give me a break, dude. You can't even multi properly.

 

It's not even close to being similar and its not straightforward such as that where a change obviously does a clear thing. 

This changes works both ways not just one and as of yet there hasn't being any evidence. 

 

 

The math itself, combined with Ogaden's demonstration, is the evidence.

That's a different argument since Sheepy can easily beat Ogaden once the war ends. 

It's also fairly relative, nothing is certain.

But I'm all for helping nations that get decimated out of being kept down, whether it is more viable now than before is another question and as far as I know no alliance has ever stayed in war long to began regaining ground in the low and middle tier. 

But no, much like before we wouldn't see that happen for much the same reasons. 

[Spooner]

It's not even close to being similar and its not straightforward such as that where a change obviously does a clear thing. 

This changes works both ways not just one and as of yet there hasn't being any evidence. 

 

1. <1000 infra nations can build less military than before

2. It's now easier and cheaper to destroy large amounts of infrastructure

3. <1000 infra nations are kept in higher score ranges than before

These combined effects make it easier to keep a beaten alliance down. Why you insist on arguing with this is beyond me.

[Clarke]

1. <1000 infra nations can build less military than before

2. It's now easier and cheaper to destroy large amounts of infrastructure

3. <1000 infra nations are kept in higher score ranges than before

These combined effects make it easier to keep a beaten alliance down. Why you insist on arguing with this is beyond me.

 

I already stated at the start the more powerful nations who use to be in range are no longer in range to attack them and keep them down. 

Not sure what changed to make it cheaper, but the infrastructure is cheaply rebuilt either way so it seems irrelevant. 

3) is completely wrong, I have experience myself prior to the change of having to navigate and basically trick weak opponents into attacking me taking up my 3 defensive war slots in order to actually build up decently. 

I will say I agree with 1), its not a change I supported other than to limit people who were in the "sweet spot" and abusing it extensively. Now that it has being largely dealt with I think that change can be reverted. 

 

Point 3 is why I argue because nations that are fallen have a better chance than before, I know it was terrible prior. It really couldn't be any worse than what was because it was simply impossible unless your opponents were not cautious. 

 

You have a bias in score change and that's fine as long you focus on means other than trying to get nations with higher scores back down to lower scores. 

Edited April 16, 2016 by Clarke

[Spooner]

I already stated at the start the more powerful nations who use to be in range are no longer in range to attack them and keep them down. 

 

I'm talking about alliance war here, as I already said, not Arrgh's raiding tactics.

 

 

 

Not sure what changed to make it cheaper, but the infrastructure is cheaply rebuilt either way so it seems irrelevant. 

 

It's cheaper because of the new mechanics aiding in it's destruction along with easier improvement losses.

 

 

 

 

3) is completely wrong, I have experience myself prior to the change of having to navigate and basically trick weak opponents into attacking me taking up my 3 defensive war slots in order to actually build up decently. 

 

No it's not. Infra has less impact on score than it did previously while cities are now 4x more important in determining score relative to infrastructure. If you used even minimal critical thinking you could see this. You also have experience prior to the change of not understanding war mechanics whatsoever, so I'm going to ignore your anecdotal experiences.

 

 

 

You have a bias in score change and that's fine as long you focus on means other than trying to get nations with higher scores back down to lower scores. 

 

I don't have much of a bias, I thought the change was poorly thought-through. However, it helped my alliance at the time, so my personal benefit was fairly mixed.

[Clarke]

 

I'm talking about alliance war here, as I already said, not Arrgh's raiding tactics.

I'm wasn't talking about Arrgh there. 

 

 

It's cheaper because of the new mechanics aiding in it's destruction along with easier improvement losses.

I'm all for tweaking a few things that need to be as I said already, I haven't paid attention to the naval suggestion but yeah I cam't say I agree with it.

I can't say I see it as major problem either, I suspect it will have minor impact if any.  

 

 

No it's not. Infra has less impact on score than it did previously while cities are now 4x more important in determining score relative to infrastructure. If you used even minimal critical thinking you could see this.

 

But again that's relative to the opponents you're facing who are going to be less powerful than they would have being prior to the change. But as I say if something can be done without messing up the score by dragging people down to where they don't belong then that is better. 

 

You also have experience prior to the change of not understanding war mechanics whatsoever, so I'm going to ignore your anecdotal experiences.

 

I'm actually quite proficient at the game mechanics and abusing/taking advantage of them in various ways. 

 

 

 

I don't have much of a bias, I thought the change was poorly thought-through. However, it helped my alliance at the time, so my personal benefit was fairly mixed.

Edited April 17, 2016 by Clarke

[Hereno]

People with more cities are penalised enough as it is: It should not be based on city count. 

 

 

I happen to agree with the first part, but AA improvement just gives defenders an unfair advantage that disincentivises offensive wars.

yeah, this is why i thought it should be something that costs points

 

it doesn't make a TON of sense to have cruise missiles be shot at airplanes but idk how else we could do it