7/9/2017 - The Great Deflation!

[Charles Bolivar]

9 minutes ago, Gabranth said:

I think you're all missing the point when it comes to this update.

The purpose wasn't to intentionally switch up the numbers in order for you to just change your improvement slots around, that'd be just a pain in the ass. Instead, what I see is a shift in the way the game is played concerning city builds. Previously, everyone had the optimal build of 100% (sometimes 115%) commerce, MMR and throw whatever is left into manufacturing and industry. Now, people will be forced to build their cities differently because of the different way that disease is calculated. What I see is two builds: commerce, with little to no industry, and industry, with little to no commerce. As one group becomes larger, the other group becomes more profitable. Everyone is running a commerce build? Those nations who produce lots will be laughing all the way to the bank because of the inflated prices of their goods. If too many people run industry, then the value goes down and people with commerce builds can swoop in and buy heaps of stuff. There is that third, low risk group of some commerce and some industry, though. 

Because of the way that money and resources are produced, the stagnation of the war scene has led to a decline in the market - that is no secret and the entire reasoning behind the change. Now the market will constantly fluctuate as people move from build to build. Before this, we all had the perfect build and now that the resources aren't being sunk, it's deflated the market. With this change, the market will likely never deflate as people will be able to profit from one build or another, as there is no such thing as a perfect city build anymore - the perfect city build structure changes with the fluctuations of the market. It's quite smart once you step back and have a look at what's trying to be done here.

That being said, the rest of the criticisms are totally valid. Should've asked what the community thought, should've warned the community of the change, should've tested the change on the test server (that's why it exists, sheepy), and you probably should've taken on the feedback of the community in order to tweak and fix. I'd recommend you listen to your closed testing beta team or whatever a bit better. For those who're saying that people won't go to war now, grow up. The market has consistently been drooping ever since the start of the game, and at the start of the game is when most of the wars were fought. I'm willing to wager that people instead do not want to fight anymore is because of the fact you can't loot without the permission of the loser, ala fortify, ala there's no profit in war for the winners, so why go to war at all. That's a whole nother discussion though. 

Anyway, tl;dr update good, PR bad

 

Nailed it 

Sheepy has pretty much cut the drastic over supply of resources from the whale tier being sold on the market as nations simply can't max 2 refined resources anymore unless they pay for the raws without dying from pollution.

Can't speak for every whale out there but due to the commerce and pollution changes, we have had our production capacity probably nerfed by a good 50% at least meaning not only are we supplying less resources on the market but more importantly need to buy the resources we were previously making therefore increasing demand.

So supply has been decreased and demand has been increased in one hit and the whales aren't able to flood the market and drop the price of resources therefore allowing the small guys to make more profit since they won't be undercut constantly by huge amounts of resources priced only a few dollars lower.

Specialisation within alliances is the way forward now and generalist builds are a thing of the past.

Im pretty keen to see how NPO deals with this change as their economic style is probably most suited to the specialist roles now presumed to be the best model. Given they presumably might need to lift their infra levels to fully benefit from the change but im keen to see how their economic distribution policies work out with this change. 

[kalev60]

I would like to know if it actually nerfed any production for the big guys or not, forget the mines whales, let your AA new players mine for you and stack up refined production buildings to make it rain steel, munitions, alu and gas again.

[Just Monika]

1 hour ago, kalev60 said:

I would like to know if it actually nerfed any production for the big guys or not, forget the mines whales, let your AA new players mine for you and stack up refined production buildings to make it rain steel, munitions, alu and gas again.

As a whale, this update reduced my manufacturing output by like 2/3, my raw ressources output by 1/2. If I were willing to put in some money, I might get it to a 50% decrease overall (by running some modest levels of pollution instead of being on 0), but yeah. I still don't get people saying "small people can now profit from not being undercut", when small people will likely just as well have lost half or more of their production, because their buildings just produce plain less. and even if ressources will be worth more, if you just have less of them, you can't claim to have more profits overall. Not to mention, if everyone produces 50% less, then well, it still is easier for whales to throw the surplus of what they still manufacture onto the market at low prices than it is for small guys not able to rely on commerce.

Also, I laugh at the "You now have to think about what you are doing". Within like 2 hours (owing to multitasking and the number of cities), I fixed my nation, there still are optimal builds and without having to purchase raws for manufacturing not supported by my choice of continent, I have even less of a need to log on frequently, because there's little to do and manage. I'm not sure that this is what one deems a successful game. I would personally have deemed it way more useful to not intervene on the supply side of things, but rather on the demand side. Introduce a consumption of ressources also in peacetime (beyond buildings and projects that are 1-time purchases) like military upkeep or consumer goods. Put it at levels where whales just cannot produce enough to cover their consumption, while smaller peeps with industry focus can produce a solid surplus and you have your healthy market where upper tier nations are forced to buy from lower tiers, while the new nations starting out aren't forced to struggle with a production that was cut by half or even two thirds. It puts the burden on upper tier and makes managing the nation a bit more engaging, not just whack the lower tier and make whaling a minimal effort thing where I only need to get on for wars, city purchases and buying stockpiles post-war.

[kalev60]

I mean are the refined resources production numbers with 5 production improvements instead of the old maximum of 3 higher or lower than the old production maximums. I could find out rather easily but I'm too lazy to do it. If the new numbers are higher the update didn't fix much cause whales will find a way to keep putting out maximums by exploiting their smaller AA mates for the raw resources. 

[Mark76]

I think the production capacity of each manufacturing improvement has stayed the same. You just have two more of each of them now.  It's resource extraction that's been reduced.

[Theodosius]

At least we got some good ads from this.
(I want commission for promoting you PP :P)

[matt2004]

This update is neither strong nor stable. It seems like an idea even the DUP would reject. Here are some suggestions on how to improve:

1) Advance warning of stupid changes

2) Progressive alliance taxes with multiple bands

3) Instead of crashing the server and putting everyone in Rose, put everyone in UPN instead. Remove the "leave" button while you're at it. Voting to leave UPN is not good.

4) Put about £25bn into UPNs bank.

5) Change the food symbol to wheat. Also change the farm picture to a field of wheat, ideally one which has been run through.

[Dubayoo]

1 hour ago, Akiyama Mio said:

I'm not sure that this is what one deems a successful game. I would personally have deemed it way more useful to not intervene on the supply side of things, but rather on the demand side. Introduce a consumption of ressources also in peacetime (beyond buildings and projects that are 1-time purchases) like military upkeep or consumer goods. Put it at levels where whales just cannot produce enough to cover their consumption, while smaller peeps with industry focus can produce a solid surplus and you have your healthy market where upper tier nations are forced to buy from lower tiers, while the new nations starting out aren't forced to struggle with a production that was cut by half or even two thirds. It puts the burden on upper tier and makes managing the nation a bit more engaging, not just whack the lower tier and make whaling a minimal effort thing where I only need to get on for wars, city purchases and buying stockpiles post-war.

Spot on. +1

[Verlion]

So this was to supposedly fix market prices, and there are two routes to follow. Take away your players income, which you should of known they would hate and rebel against, or add something new to the game that players want and need to spend resources on. Guess you went with the easy quick solution, eh? Don't be surprised when more people start running from your game in that case.

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

most noobs can already grow fast
>5 cities day one
>8 cities in a month
>10 cities in a month w/ credits

>11 cities in two months
>14 cities in 3 months
>15 cities in two months with credits

in 3 months time if built up, they can seriously be ok. They're not supposed to be able to insta-win. Look at all the rerolls just speed running back.

Get better econ programs people.

Also we have way too many alliances. Look at the damn web. It's good that crappy micros will now struggle. Just merge into your home AA or protector. A collective is better at gathering and redistributing resources. You can turn your 2 man discord into a group conversation or just form a squad in your new AA. 

Edited July 10, 2017 by Shifty Stranger

[Spooner]

Seriously though. My problem is *not* with the idea of destroying "maxed slot" builds. I like that change.

The issue with this change is that it's now 2-3x harder to produce the resources needed for war. War already takes around 3+ months to save up for (depending on the length of it).

IMO, we *need* a reason to go to war. There really isn't one right now. Ideally, fixing the "offload alliance bank" exploit should happen. If you loot 1-2% of the alliance bank, and you can't offload it [you could do this by, say, capping the amount an alliance can "send" from it's coffers to 2% of it's total holdings per day or something] perhaps we'd have an actual reason to go to war again.

[Dubayoo]

20 hours ago, Alex said:

As many of you know, and many have complained for quite some time, the game has seen a lot of "inflation" since it's inception. There are now very large nations that produce tons of money and resources which has devalued resources and really thrown the game out of balance. Originally, my intent with how nations ought to work is that newer nations would focus on raw resource production, mid-sized nations would buy raw resources from smaller nations and refine them into manufactured resources, which they would sell to larger nations that focus primarily on commerce. It's been a long time since that was the case, primarily because it's very easy to have 100% commerce and use the rest of your improvement slots of resource production.

To address these issues: low resource values, the lack of tier-based trading, and a lack of nation specialization, and I am implementing a pretty simple solution. What I am doing is (in most cases) halving resource production per improvement, but doubling the cap on each raw resource improvement. What this means is that you can still produce as many resources as you were before, however, you will need to use twice as many slots. This is how the specialization issue is being addressed; if you really want to be, say, a coal producer, you will need to use twice as many slots on coal production, limiting what other things you can do with your improvement slots.

If this was your objective, all you had to do was increase the consumption rate for manufacturing buildings. That way, they would have to import raw materials from lower-tier nations more.  Increasing the number of slots needed for raw material production reduces the amount of slots available for military buildings which reduces military size and reduces product demand. 

[Mark76]

Better solutions

1: More realistic resource demand when buiilding military equipment (it doesn't take much research to see that the average tank must contain more than one ton of steel.  Likewise: planes, ships and missiles) or city improvements

2: Consumer goods.  Move Factories from Military to Civil and make them capable of producing civilian vehicles as well as military ones.  Replace Factories in Military with Depots.  Don't sweat that there are now five improvements under Civil.  Adjust pollution and commerce penalties/bonuses to reflect the new addition.  Make civilian vehicles a marketable asset for extra trade opportunities.

I mean, seriously, why does this world not have a consumer goods market?  Other than for food.

[Vack]

6 hours ago, durmij said:

Not really, the game is still so simple it's practically solved. Which is fine, most of the gameplay is actually coordination and social skill utilization.

I logged in today, and I had lost 26% commerce, had my production halved and gained 8.5% disease. And honestly, aside from the stunning lack of design 101 by not informing the player base, my main and only problem is the pollution. It's a massive knock on effect on the commerce nerf that disproportionately affects smaller nations as they'll lack the slots needed to deal with it.

And where are the updates that players actually want and don't require balancing at all? Like an export to all cities function or tax brackets.

3k land master race fam

[Mark76]

Another solution.  Make mineral resources (coal/oil, bauxite/iron, lead/uranium) dwindle over time at the rate at which a nation extracts them, thus forcing older nations to expand geographically in the search for new veins/fields, making them spend money on land, or buy them off of younger nations on the open market.  Apply retroactively for some top quality kvetching

Realistically (yes, I know that's a dirty word around here) raw resources should cost more to extract as easily exploitable veins are used up and it becomes necessary to dig/drill deeper.  That could also be part of the equation.

[Mark76]

52 minutes ago, Mark76 said:

Don't sweat that there are now five improvements under Civil.

Alternatively: Split Manufacturing into three categories

1. Resources (extraction)
2. Processing (refinement into useful materials)
3. Manufacturing (transformation of processed materials into military or civilian goods)

New manufacturing improvements would include

Auto Plant.  Produces vehicles for civilian and military use (retooling necessary depending on what is being produced at the time),  Cost to build.  Some ludicrously small amount of aluminium and dollahs.  Each auto plant can produce up to 500 civilian or 100 military vehicles per day.  Limit 3 per city.  Adds 30 points to Pollution index and 2 points to Commerce score.  Running costs $x per turn/$X per day.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Mark76

[Inconnu]

So we all produce less and sell it for more now. Alex next time you do something like this PLEASE, PLEASE add a way to change all cities at the same time! (That would also be a great gameplay improvement by the way.)

Edited July 10, 2017 by Inconnu

[WISD0MTREE]

9 hours ago, Kastor said:

Everyone who's saying "just grow up and deal with it" has high cities and high infra. Just to note. 

I wasn't aware 1,500 was "high infra." Good to know. 

[Thalmor]

10 minutes ago, WISD0MTREE said:

I wasn't aware 1,500 was "high infra." Good to know. 

If you have more than 300 infra per city you're basically a whale.

[Ripper]

22 minutes ago, Thalmor said:

If you have more than 300 infra per city you're basically a whale.

I can confirm that.

[koru]

This is a mighty good change that makes me sit up and notice the game again. Finally.

Such that it is not about just some 100% dumb declare-war-declare-war kind of brainless timewasting wargame where there is absolutely no bit of nation building and economics. This update has brought big, substantial improvements.

Oh yeah. Keeping it tough for those who love to fight and lose and start new nation all over again Rinse N Repeat.

Brilliant.

[hadesflames]

 

16 hours ago, Ripper said:

I got a guy from the Dark Brotherhood delete today. Should I stop raiding?

Yes, actually. You worthless removed ruin communities. That's why no one likes you, no body gives a shit that you like to raid. Now piss off.

16 hours ago, Micchan said:

You can do wars to destroy big nations and stop them from making more money

They're all on the same side, so actually, no. You can't.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Alex
Removing bad word -Alex

[Ripper]

1 minute ago, hadesflames said:

Yes, actually. You worthless !@#$s ruin communities. That's why no one likes you, no body gives a shit that you like to raid. Now piss off.

@hadesflames I am really sorry that you want to delete due to Arrgh, but it's not really my fault you are incompetent.  

But, you are right. There should be no war around. Else, players that want to play minecraft and just build up without ever warring, will have to delete.

[hadesflames]

34 minutes ago, Ripper said:

-stupid shit-

Not sure I quite understand the feces that is spewing from your removed mouth.

Edit: ^Circumvented filter. Rule violation, please warn.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Alex
Bad word removed. Already warned for previous post. -Alex

[Ripper]

2 minutes ago, hadesflames said:

Not sure I quite understand the feces that is spewing from your c-u-n-t mouth.

Well, I didn't expect you to understand. I would never overestimate you. XD