3/5/2018 - New War Changes Implemented

[Johnny Costello]

11 minutes ago, WISD0MTREE said:

 

I get it's temporary, but is there even a reason as to why this was added in the first place? I thought you were trying to incentivise war? This is definitely not doing that. 

Are you upset that you're too weak to actually fight a real Player? 

[WISD0MTREE]

1 minute ago, Johnny Costello said:

Are you upset that you're too weak to actually fight a real Player? 

I'm upset that the players with lower city count have a harder time attacking a player with a larger city count. 

But I will remind you there is a button to call my bluff on my nation. It starts with a D and ends with an R. 

[Who Me]

Sheepy has sold out to the whales. He doesn't give a shit about the rest of the players. All of his recent changes have helped the whales and hurt the rest of the players. He has succeeded in making this a pay to win game. His next update will be to increase or uncap the number of credits you can use per month.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Who Me

[Potato]

may I ask why it shows expected profits for primary resources (oil, iron, food, ect. . .) but not for secondary (steel, gas, ect. . .)

[WISD0MTREE]

3 minutes ago, Potpie99 said:

may I ask why it shows expected profits for primary resources (oil, iron, food, ect. . .) but not for secondary (steel, gas, ect. . .)

Profit depends if you buy from the market or produce your own raws. 

[Johnny Costello]

22 minutes ago, WISD0MTREE said:

I'm upset that the players with lower city count have a harder time attacking a player with a larger city count. 

But I will remind you there is a button to call my bluff on my nation. It starts with a D and ends with an R. 

You're too weak ?

[WISD0MTREE]

3 minutes ago, Johnny Costello said:

You're too weak ?

Well, I guess that shows you don't know what down-declares are. Maybe you shouldn't be arguing on the topic of up-declares, then?

 

Edited March 6, 2018 by WISD0MTREE

[Raziel]

Love the changes, especially in the resources. All the war changes make sense as well. Attacking has a cost in war and is almost never tactically advantageous. Defense is always easier especially when they're fortified. 

[Johnny Costello]

1 minute ago, WISD0MTREE said:

Well, I guess that shows you don't know what down-declares are. Maybe you shouldn't be arguing on the topic of up-declares, then? 

My lack of desire to downdeclare = lack of knowing what downdeclare is?.  

 

Perhaps we should stop hijacking this topic.  I think G'kar hates when I do that 

2 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Love the changes, especially in the resources. All the war changes make sense as well. Attacking has a cost in war and is almost never tactically advantageous. Defense is always easier especially when they're fortified. 

I like the nerfed fortify cause it's more a struggle to fight your way back.  And build a tactical plan under time pressure 

[Guest Epi]

I'm loving these new changes, though i'm also aware the community outrage will probably put some of these Temporary ones to rest. As a note when regarding Smaller vs. Larger Nations. The smaller nations should go in knowing they are at a disadvantage, it will take 6 of them to seriously reduce the opponents air power. That said, Biege was definitely going to help these larger nations in those wars. One mistake could cost the smaller nations everything, so the changes to beige actually help fight them.

As for the defensive slots and the economic changes this should be fine. You can either take a defensive style of gameplay or an aggressive one, sure this will hurt pirates but they can also now limit the damage they take by not going after a ton of targets at once. The raw resource changes will definitely help guide new players to make more profitable choices and hopefully the production bonus extends to Manufacturing. Can't remember. But that's a very good incentive for them to switch, which far too many people aren't doing right now

[Spaceman Thrax]

That two defensive war limit seems incredibly poorly thought out. High city count nations will be incredibly difficult to counter, and will be able to basically freely attack once they become slotlocked, for a very quick example.

What is it about lots of people saying "you should think these changes through more" that makes you think "I should hastily make a bunch of random other changes without thinking through or understanding them"?

[Insert Name Here]

24 minutes ago, Epi said:

I'm loving these new changes, though i'm also aware the community outrage will probably put some of these Temporary ones to rest. As a note when regarding Smaller vs. Larger Nations. The smaller nations should go in knowing they are at a disadvantage, it will take 6 of them to seriously reduce the opponents air power. That said, Biege was definitely going to help these larger nations in those wars. One mistake could cost the smaller nations everything, so the changes to beige actually help fight them.

As for the defensive slots and the economic changes this should be fine. You can either take a defensive style of gameplay or an aggressive one, sure this will hurt pirates but they can also now limit the damage they take by not going after a ton of targets at once. The raw resource changes will definitely help guide new players to make more profitable choices and hopefully the production bonus extends to Manufacturing. Can't remember. But that's a very good incentive for them to switch, which far too many people aren't doing right now

 

Going after the maximum amount of targets possible is just common sense if they're inactive or you're getting rolled. Plus we keep our infra low so damage isn't an issue.

What these changes will do is that they will punish raid / war minded players even further, by taking away the beige time they deserve after getting rolled, which is bullshit and is yet just another feature that rewards passive and reactionary game style.

I hope Sheepy realizes this beige measure is ridiculous and ends up making it void, but either way we have to live with it at least for for a month.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Insert Name Here

[Seeker]

19 minutes ago, Spaceman Thrax said:

That two defensive war limit seems incredibly poorly thought out. High city count nations will be incredibly difficult to counter, and will be able to basically freely attack once they become slotlocked, for a very quick example.

What is it about lots of people saying "you should think these changes through more" that makes you think "I should hastily make a bunch of random other changes without thinking through or understanding them"?

That's literally what I said as well, things should be organized and tested before ever being implemented into a live server.  This is beyond absurd and reflects back to the economic update in which it was untested and founded to result in a change that the community overwhelmingly deemed unnecessary and it detracted from the original intentions.  Instead of sidelining a community, how about you listen to it considering the same people who post typically here have the most experience dealing with it?

If you even think about it from an objective standpoint you can clearly see how this doesn't equalize anything but adds more problems than it solves.  It's really hard for myself to justify new players joining the alliance to continue playing to be essentially at a disadvantage from competing with higher tier alliances.  Previously, as long as you were active and worked for it you stood the slightest chance to provide some meaningful damage and perhaps even bring people down if you worked for it.  However utilizing this will result in that from not being a possibility and null it completely.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Seeker

[durmij]

@Alex I know you're dead set on keeping the econ changes, but would you consider dialing back some of the pollution, especially from resource production. I lost about a slot and a half to the pollution changes when I was sitting around 1600 infra, and getting that space back would be a big boost for small nations.

[WISD0MTREE]

1 hour ago, Johnny Costello said:

Perhaps we should stop hijacking this topic. 

I think G'kar hates when I do that 

Let's. 

However, he's no longer a mod.  

[Johnny Costello]

13 minutes ago, WISD0MTREE said:

Let's. 

However, he's no longer a mod.  

?

 

He got fired!  ??

[George Clooney]

I'm going to be blunt here and say that ALL the trial changes shouldn't even be implemented and I don't need a 30 day trial to know they are bad ideas and I'm not reassured by the fact they may be going away.

 

Edited March 6, 2018 by George Clooney

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

I luv this new theme. That's the only change I care about. 

#mostAestheticnation

[Guest San Fortunado]

2 hours ago, ComradeMilton said:

Just my opinion, but a better use of time might've been to try to address how your server can't seem to keep an uptime of more than a month

Maybe cus the hosting system sucks?

[Dio Brando]

What's making me, and a significant quantity of other people, pissed off about these changes, is not just that they don't seem like a fix that the community asked for, not merely the fact that these are things we'll need to adapt to: it's more so that you threw these curveballs at us without much consultation. and expect us to adapt. Let's assume we don't adapt for a while, and these changes stay for a month: we're losing out on optimal builds. Let's say we do change, but these changes get reversed after a month: we're losing out by investing time and funds into something clearly not worth it. That = no bueno.

i) 25% more casualties for the opponent. While it may seem as if this is useless, and can't be used, it certainly can. Assume you're in a scenario where you have greater standing forces, but have just been updeclared upon. The key to updeclares is to eliminate the opponent's airforce. By doing so, you're exploiting the extra day taken to max out jets (slow recruitment rate, as compared to others). With the 25% bonus on, you could spend the next few turns without logging in, because opponents that are already suiciding into your nation are going to get f'd even more when they launch an air-to-air.
-
ii) 5 MAPs as start-up. This eliminates the "Ground then air" strat, or, alternatively, the "air then ground" strat. Second, it punishes updeclares even further. As I mentioned above, the key is to eliminate the opponents airforce by slowly wearing it down. It becomes far slower this way, and because of this, gives the bigger guy more time to shoot down his opponents jets. At the same time, it swings towards giving the defender more time to prepare. I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea in and of itsel
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iii) Slot changes: oh man, again, more time for defender to react, and reduces a key component of updeclares/bringing down a larger opposing enemy: you'd have to invest a greater amount of time to wear him down.
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Combine this with all of the above, and you have this meta that's really hard on not allowing submarine strats to continue. There may be an argument for why this was needed. Now, moving on to something I think is so hilariously exploitable (assuming this beige takes away your loot, which it should)

The "no beige if you're engaged in an offensive" change.

Let's say you're on the losing end, not looking to get back into the round/can't by this point. Beige takes away too much of your resource stockpile. What do you do? Declare war on an inactive; they don't log in, don't deal damage to you, and you're free to stay the way you are. Looking at it from the angle of a game theoretic model, the payoff for engaging in an offensive war means your stockpile doesn't get affected by beige loot. (Here, let's note that loot has been nerfed since the last mech setup, so it, proportions wise, is not as big of an issue as before). At the same time, you aren't allowed rebuild time.
-

TL;DR: Test that shit out before you push it to live.

[durmij]

https://politicsandwar.com/city/id=176325

So... commerce is straight up dead for cities with less than 2k infra.

This seems like a recipe for a cash crisis.

[Who Me]

2 minutes ago, durmij said:

https://politicsandwar.com/city/id=176325

So... commerce is straight up dead for cities with less than 2k infra.

This seems like a recipe for a cash crisis.

This is what happens when the person making the changes doesn't play the game.

[TheNG]

21 minutes ago, Dio Brando said:

snip

^^^ Basically this.

These new changes will seriously hurt the ability of lower city nations to successfully attack (and more importantly, take down), larger nations, coordination or no. That's a big part of wars right now thanks to the tier disparity and politics and all that. These changes should not get rolled out, not even temporarily. We have a Test Server for exactly this sort of thing, testing out changes before they're rolled out into the main game, a place with (for lack of a better word) real-world consequences. Put these on the test server for a month if you have your heart set on them, and see how they go there. I can tell you right now it'll make bigger problems, but whatever.

Frankly, I'm struggling to see the genesis for these changes, really. To @Alex how did you think these temporary war changes would improve the game, or make it more fun for people to play? I can't really see how they're anything other than throwing stuff at the wall for the sake of change, when they're really not what the war system needs. No one asked for these changes, and making upper tier nations more advantaged (as an upper tier nation myself) does nothing to improve the game and certainly doesn't make me look forward to the next war any more. If you're listening to us, then do something we all actually want and fix the economy for heavens sake! 

Edit: Dark theme is top-notch though, thanks for that!

Edited March 6, 2018 by TheNG

[Holton]

@Alex,

I'm really glad to see enthusiasm in regards to responding to player feedback. I recognize that all of these temporary changes are direct responses to issues raised in your last thread or other popular threads.

However, I urge you to continue your stated goal of listening to player feedback by utilizing your test server rather than making last-minute amendments and praying they'll do well.

I would also urge you to begin analyzing your game in the context of the meta rather than only the mechanics. A better meta = more activity = more interest = more n00b retention = more donations = wins all around. So let's look at how your mechanical changes will impact the game's meta.

 

- The resource bump is a cool idea that furthers your goal of trying to force nations to specialize and, hopefully, force more economic interaction. Fair play. More resources = cheaper resources and that means cheaper wars which means less-scared alliances which means more action. A good overall change for the meta.

- Reduced MAP's at war declaration. While a few moments thinking about this will tell you that I can just wait until a few minutes before turn change and still get my two attacks in, I will stay positive and point out that this now actually gives Fortress a purpose in that even if you game the system for that extra MAP, you still won't get two attacks if you're using Fortress. If an alliance is active enough and knows about a coming blitz, they could all mass-swap to fortress to frick things up. All in all this is a change designed to give the defender an advantage but at the expensive of the attacker. A good intention but a bad change. Discouraging action is bad for the meta.

- Limiting defensive war slots to 2. Another change that makes a blitz more risky and therefore discouraging. As pointed out by others, this also significantly (33.33%) reduces the ability to up-declare on larger targets. Discouraging action is bad for the meta.

- Beige changes. This is perhaps the largest and most impactful change in this update. This change alone destroys the already-shaky chances of large-scale action because of the disadvantage it leaves an aggressor nation with. Using your own words, if an aggressive war goes sideways and the aggressor loses - they will not longer get that "rest and recovery period." Instead leaving them vulnerable to the world. A horrible, horrible change mechanically and a severely negative change for the meta.

- Dark theme. This is fricking awesome, thank you.

 

 

I will again echo that while the defender needs a better way to actually defend and overcome a solid blitz, the attacker also needs the ability to continue attacking successfully.

[Samuel Bates]

My only question is when will you upgrade the fortress role it says it drops MAPs to 5 at the start of war but the update changed it to 5 anyways. Has it’s mechanics been updated to 4 or is it still 5?