3/5/2018 - New War Changes Implemented

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

22 minutes ago, Dio Brando said:

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

Time to build to 3k infra and sit on it with Fortress War Policy. Miss me with dat submarine shit plebs.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

Im excited to be much less of a sitting duck to a significant portion of the population that I can never hit. Thanks sheeps!

[Buorhann]

Ugh, scratch this post.  Was a total eye sore.  I really hate quoting on these forums.

 

Edited March 6, 2018 by Buorhann

[Buorhann]

5 hours ago, Alex said:

NEW WAR CHANGES

• I have redesigned the UI of each war page to be more user friendly. There is also additional information on pages, such as maximum infrastructure destroyed in an attack, units killed, etc.
• The introduction of War Types: There are 3 types: Ordinary, Raid, and Attrition. Ordinary wars do 50% less damage and 50% less loot than wars did previously. Raid wars do 100% loot and 25% damage, and Attrition wars do 100% damage and 25% loot. War type is decided upon declaration; the defender in a given war has at least 50% of both damage and loot and matches the opponent if it is offensively a Raid or Attrition war. So, for example, in a Raid war the defender will do 50% damage and 100% loot back to the aggressor.
• The damage and loot done by beiging has been reduced. Damage is reduced to a base 4% (affected by War Types) and loot has been reduced (for the case of money) to 10% (resources are staying at 10%, so it is 10% for both money and resources looted.)
• Fortify has been changed. It no longer offers any additional Resistance in wars, but now causes your opponent to take 25% more casualties when attacking while you are Fortified. It has also been reduced to 3 MAPs in cost.
• The Bounty system is introduced, whereby you can post Bounties on other nations. Bounties cannot be posted until a nation is at least 3 days old. Bounties cannot be claimed unless the war was declared after the Bounty was posted. Bounties cannot be claimed while the Bounty Hunter nation is blockaded. In these cases, the Bounty will remain and the blockaded Bounty Hunter will not receive any award. After some testing on the live server, I may implement a system whereby a blockaded Bounty Hunter would still claim the reward, just not until their Blockade is over.
• Ground Battles, Airstrikes, and Naval Battles now offer detailed battle reports after the fact related to rolls and the method behind determining battle outcomes. This should be useful in answering those "how did I lose with 1.3x more units!?" type questions.
• Battle Simulators have all been updated to match all current war formulas.

 

frick it, I'll just quote each individual piece as I can't be bothered to fix the multi quoting disaster this forum causes sometimes.

The first two points are fine, nothing too game breaking there.  The beige change was stupid, not sure why you're doing that (But then again, with the later Trial changes to war - it seems you're completely gutting the war system).

Glad to see Fortify nerfed, but I'm not liking this particular change when there was a better idea.  I liked the idea that had Fortify return SOME Resistance in order to buy time for a double buy strat or waiting to get assistance.

Bounties are fine.

The last two points, thank you.

[Buorhann]

6 hours ago, Alex said:

TRIAL CHANGES

These changes are some last-minute considerations that I think may prove to be good changes (or maybe not) after some recent feedback. Understand that the changes in this section will be removed after approximately one month unless someone comes up with a really good reason to keep them around. So if you hate them, don't worry, they'll be gone soon enough.

• I've added a bonus for having multiple of the same resource producing (raw or manufacturing) improvement. This bonus goes from no-bonus for having just 1 improvement, linearly up to a 50% bonus for having the max number of that improvement in a city. The idea behind this change is that it buffs resource production while encouraging specialization in one or two resources, and that new players should be able to max all but a couple improvements (coal/oil/farms) in a given city with just 500 infrastructure. Ideally this will increase profitability of resource production, address the issue of limited supply of resources, and help new nations grow. Check out this PDF for more information on this change: https://www.docdroid.net/hyQAMCD/texstudio-q10360.pdf
• I have reduced the number of starting Military Action Points (MAPs) on both sides to 5. The idea behind this change is that now that you cannot use Fortify to prevent losing a war, or perhaps to comeback from behind in a war, you are at a disadvantage when someone attacks you and you aren't online to immediately respond. This change means that defenders have an extra 2 hours to get online and use their accumulated MAPs in defensive wars before they've wasted new MAP generation and are behind in the race to win the war. War Policies still affect this as they did before, i.e. they will add/subtract from the trial starting MAP value of 5 as expected.
• Similarly, I have limited defensive war slots by default to 2. With the war changes I am worried about what will happen when someone is blitzed by 3 nations at once and really having no recourse. By limiting defensive war slots to 2, it should be easier for a nation under attack to comeback and fight their aggressors. NOTE: Under this change, if you are involved in 3 or more offensive wars, a third defensive slot opens up. That means that by default you only have 2 defensive slots, but once you declare 3 or more offensive wars, you are now vulnerable to 3 aggressors as well. I understand this is a significant and probably quite controversial change, which is why it is intended to be temporary, unless it proves especially useful and overwhelmingly popular. 
• Lastly, I have changed losing a war so that you will NOT be sent to Beige for any length of time if you are engaged in any offensive wars. This means that Beige will function as it is intended to work, as a buffer time to rebuild/regroup, for nations that are not in any offensive wars. For nations that are in offensive wars, they will not get any Beige time. This change is in part because many players find it preferential not to win a war because their opponent gains so much from it, and also because players are starting to intentionally get Beiged right after they declare new wars, so as to prevent counter-attacks. This latter gameplay seems like an unfair abuse of war mechanics, and this change prevents aggressors from using Beige to their advantage. Again, this is probably a controversial change that will likely have unexpected consequences for gameplay, which is why it is under the TRIAL change section, meaning it will be changed back to how it was before in about a month.

 

All of this is pretty stupid.

First, just return the Econ system to what it was before.  We get the idea of what you want, to give newer nations a shot at growing to catch up, but you'd have to realize that the bigger city nations will always hold a Econ advantage no matter what change you implement.  I'll defer to @Sketchy on this.

The rest of that?

You might as well delete War until you find a better system.

>Dropping MAPs to 5

>Defensive Slots to 2

>No beige if you have Offensive Wars

 

You pretty much killed any incentive to open up Offensive Wars.  Look at my recent battle history during the Terminal Jest vs IQ shenanigans.  I had to fight against overwhelming odds and I beiged all of my opponents.  Sure they could've beiged me, but they chose to opt out of that in fear of me buying back while in beige protection mode.  That was a choice they made, and yet I still managed to buy military back enough to win my battles.

I did more damage to them than they ever did to me and I came out on top with the loot earned after rebuying Infra/etc.

In order to do that, I had to stay on top of my game.  I had to time my usage of MAPs as well as conserve resources for Double Buys.  I had to think about every action to take, and when I screwed up once - I paid for it.  That was a lot of strategy involved in my decision making on that.

However, what you're doing here is completely gutting offensive wars.  So far you've indirectly caused issues with war by messing with the Economy, now you're messing with war directly which will indirectly affect the Economy right back.  By killing the incentive to war or the capability to war, if we're being honest, all people have to do is sit on their ass and continue to stockpile resources - and yeah that's a knee jerk speculation, but look at what the game has gone through for the past 9+ months.

 

Individually picking at these changes, you nerfed MAPs because of Fortify change.  There's no way to build up Resistance now, however, you turned around and nerfed Offensive Wars by not granting them beige if they lose a Defensive War while being on the Offense at the same time.  There's no reason for this Trial change at all, because the Offensive Wars will end soon anyways due to no ability to build Resistance back up.

Before this change, if anybody opened up a Offensive War while in beige, it would remove their beige.  Therefore opening them back up.

Defensive slots to 2 also kills any teamwork with alliances and their fellow treaties.  It also drastically boosts up the survival rate of higher city nations, and they'll be able to swoop down on lower city nations with impunity.

You're being very inconsistent with what you want here with the changes you're implementing or "testing" (Huh, isn't there a Test server to try out these trial changes?)

 

I'm curious as to who is giving you advice on these changes, or gave you ideas on it, because whoever you're getting the ideas from is awful.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Buorhann

[Azaghul]

I like most of these changes, a bit more skeptical on a few others.  But overall, I appreciate that you're making changes and mixing things up.  It's good for the game.  And even for those changes that I might not like, I appreciate the fact that you're putting time and effort into it.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Azaghul

[Etgfrog]

6 hours ago, Alex said:

• I've added a bonus for having multiple of the same resource producing (raw or manufacturing) improvement. This bonus goes from no-bonus for having just 1 improvement, linearly up to a 50% bonus for having the max number of that improvement in a city. The idea behind this change is that it buffs resource production while encouraging specialization in one or two resources, and that new players should be able to max all but a couple improvements (coal/oil/farms) in a given city with just 500 infrastructure. Ideally this will increase profitability of resource production, address the issue of limited supply of resources, and help new nations grow. Check out this PDF for more information on this change: https://www.docdroid.net/hyQAMCD/texstudio-q10360.pdf

This actually doesn't help new players, it helps old players far more because something like coal or farms you can only reach once you hit very high infrastructure. If you wanted to help new players then it would be the bonus would be distributed between each industry you have active, so if you have lead mines and munitions factories built then each would give 25% bonus. If your some whale with all 8 industries active, then it would be a 6.25% bonus.

[ForgotPants]

26 minutes ago, Etgfrog said:

This actually doesn't help new players, it helps old players far more because something like coal or farms you can only reach once you hit very high infrastructure. If you wanted to help new players then it would be the bonus would be distributed between each industry you have active, so if you have lead mines and munitions factories built then each would give 25% bonus. If your some whale with all 8 industries active, then it would be a 6.25% bonus.

From Economic to War, all changes seem to help the higher tier/city count nations immensely. The longer such changes stay in effect, the more entrenched such nations will get.

[Doughnuts]

Well I like a lot of the changes.

War trail changes.
1) I have reduced the number of starting Military Action Points (MAPs) on both sides to 5
This is a very good change imo, it stops nations from attacking and doing to much damage when someone is sleeping, what i hate most is when nations wait until people are offline before attacking, this is just a way Alex is making you man up and fight a war and not simply slap someone when they are sleeping.

2) I have limited defensive war slots by default to 2 ( if you are involved in 3 or more offensive wars, a third defensive slot opens up)
Again another change that is aimed at stopping massive alliances from hitting and wiping out a smaller alliance in the first wave.

3) I have changed losing a war so that you will NOT be sent to Beige for any length of time if you are engaged in any offensive wars.
Another change that will again make people think twice about the war they will start, as they wont be able to simply hide in beige after starting the war.

I truly think you guys are over looking the plus side to these changes, they are aimed to make wars fair for def and attacking nations, I would love to see a 24 hour war notice to stop a blitz that would truly make things even.

[King Olafr of the Faroes]

8 hours ago, Marianna said:

Bonus Production for having 3 Coal Mines: 9.09%

Bonus Production for having 3 Iron Mines: 20%

???

Shouldn't that be 9.09% or 20% for both resources?

No.

 

Having max number of a thing gives +50% bonus. So if you can have more coal mines than iron mines, it makes perfect sense.

[Shiho Nishizumi]

11 hours ago, Alex said:

 

• Fortify has been changed. It no longer offers any additional Resistance in wars, but now causes your opponent to take 25% more casualties when attacking while you are Fortified. It has also been reduced to 3 MAPs in cost.
• I have reduced the number of starting Military Action Points (MAPs) on both sides to 5. The idea behind this change is that now that you cannot use Fortify to prevent losing a war, or perhaps to comeback from behind in a war, you are at a disadvantage when someone attacks you and you aren't online to immediately respond. This change means that defenders have an extra 2 hours to get online and use their accumulated MAPs in defensive wars before they've wasted new MAP generation and are behind in the race to win the war. War Policies still affect this as they did before, i.e. they will add/subtract from the trial starting MAP value of 5 as expected.

 

So... you've nerfed fortify so it no longer gives Resistance back, but you are testing a reduction in starting MAP's in part because of people spamming fortify to avoid beige?

Also, why implemente these temporary features here rather than the test server? Is it so desolate that you need to test changes here to get meaningful feedback?

[Conner Temple]

Econ and bounties updates are perfect. The war changes, not so much. As others have iterated, use the test server for these 'temporary' changes that you just throw at us without any consultation.

[Big Brother]

All I want to know is why the heck we can't see who posts bounties. Why allow people to hide? If someone posts a bounty on me, I want to be able to see who it was so I can frick up their day for having the audacity to do such a thing. You can bet your ass there'd be more wars if people were able to see who's trying to get them rolled.

[Itachi]

OooooooooooooO this gonna be interesante

[Spaceman Thrax]

33 minutes ago, Big Brother said:

All I want to know is why the heck we can't see who posts bounties. Why allow people to hide? If someone posts a bounty on me, I want to be able to see who it was so I can frick up their day for having the audacity to do such a thing. You can bet your ass there'd be more wars if people were able to see who's trying to get them rolled.

A spy op, perhaps. Remember spy ops, kids?

[Dr Rush]

15 hours ago, Alex said:

TRIAL CHANGES

These changes are some last-minute considerations that I think may prove to be good changes (or maybe not) after some recent feedback. Understand that the changes in this section will be removed after approximately one month unless someone comes up with a really good reason to keep them around. So if you hate them, don't worry, they'll be gone soon enough.

• 1. I've added a bonus for having multiple of the same resource producing (raw or manufacturing) improvement. This bonus goes from no-bonus for having just 1 improvement, linearly up to a 50% bonus for having the max number of that improvement in a city. The idea behind this change is that it buffs resource production while encouraging specialization in one or two resources, and that new players should be able to max all but a couple improvements (coal/oil/farms) in a given city with just 500 infrastructure. Ideally this will increase profitability of resource production, address the issue of limited supply of resources, and help new nations grow. Check out this PDF for more information on this change: https://www.docdroid.net/hyQAMCD/texstudio-q10360.pdf
• 2. I have reduced the number of starting Military Action Points (MAPs) on both sides to 5. The idea behind this change is that now that you cannot use Fortify to prevent losing a war, or perhaps to comeback from behind in a war, you are at a disadvantage when someone attacks you and you aren't online to immediately respond. This change means that defenders have an extra 2 hours to get online and use their accumulated MAPs in defensive wars before they've wasted new MAP generation and are behind in the race to win the war. War Policies still affect this as they did before, i.e. they will add/subtract from the trial starting MAP value of 5 as expected.
• 3. Similarly, I have limited defensive war slots by default to 2. With the war changes I am worried about what will happen when someone is blitzed by 3 nations at once and really having no recourse. By limiting defensive war slots to 2, it should be easier for a nation under attack to comeback and fight their aggressors. NOTE: Under this change, if you are involved in 3 or more offensive wars, a third defensive slot opens up. That means that by default you only have 2 defensive slots, but once you declare 3 or more offensive wars, you are now vulnerable to 3 aggressors as well. I understand this is a significant and probably quite controversial change, which is why it is intended to be temporary, unless it proves especially useful and overwhelmingly popular. 
• 4. Lastly, I have changed losing a war so that you will NOT be sent to Beige for any length of time if you are engaged in any offensive wars. This means that Beige will function as it is intended to work, as a buffer time to rebuild/regroup, for nations that are not in any offensive wars. For nations that are in offensive wars, they will not get any Beige time. This change is in part because many players find it preferential not to win a war because their opponent gains so much from it, and also because players are starting to intentionally get Beiged right after they declare new wars, so as to prevent counter-attacks. This latter gameplay seems like an unfair abuse of war mechanics, and this change prevents aggressors from using Beige to their advantage. Again, this is probably a controversial change that will likely have unexpected consequences for gameplay, which is why it is under the TRIAL change section, meaning it will be changed back to how it was before in about a month.

That's it. I know this is a big update, and I know parts of it will probably be lauded and others will be hated. In any case, bear in mind that this is not a final update to the game or anything, and I will continue to monitor gameplay, listen to feedback from players, and work on improving things as we go forward to create a better game for everyone. I know many of you disagree with me frequently on things, but I hope that at the root of it you share my interest in creating a more fun game that will attract more players and be better for everyone.

If there are any unexpected bugs as a result of the implementation of this update, you can use the Bug Reports subforum here, #bug-reports channel in the Discord server, or shoot me a DM on Discord for important bugs that need to be resolved quickly.

 

1. Okay so resource change. I actually don't hate it. Its a move in the right direction balance wise. And I appreciate that it came in the form of a new mechanic rather then number fiddling for the Nth time.

2. Meh, valid arguments for both sides.

3. Again arguments for both sides. However, this is rather unbalanced on its own, it leaves the mid tier rather unable to do anything about tier. This would be fine if there was a way to close the gap in a timely manner but there isn't so.

4. I support the precept not the execution. Beiging has always been a flawed concept, a player is never willfully going to do something against their tactical best interest. And mechanics that force them into that are by necessity nonsensical and generally discourage war all together. This is why we have such nonsense for optimal war strategies. The best fix for this is to remove beiging entirely and adding a catch up mechanic for post war. This halfway bullshit, is actually worse though. It creates an incentive to not defend your allies, a critical part of a good defense is strategic offense. This further stacks on the mechanics rather harshly punishing people who try to fight back when attacked.

[Holton]

E-Court will be hearing the emergency case of The People of Orbis vs. Sheepy AKA Alex on the charges of dereliction of duty, willful ignoring of the test server, wrongful updating, and donation-related corruption.

The court encourages the defendant to appear tomorrow at day-change approx. 7 pm Wednesday March 7th to plead his guilt or profess his innocence.

https://discord.gg/8X5brDA

 

[LostWorld]

 

Edited March 6, 2018 by LostWorld

[Apeman]

Great game sheepy. Still love it. Change as the overlord pleases. Any chance you could make it visible to see who puts a bounty on you? What about posting an alliance bounty?

[Ogaden]

I don't really feel like playing anymore to be honest, this will wipe out the last vestiges of fun this game had.  Maybe I'll take a month off and see how things are in April

[Dubayoo]

Wow... this game sucks worse than it was before I went on a 3 month vacation.

*Goes back to playing Twitter - politics mode... even though the multiaccounts and echo chambers are worse there*

Can you at least put a trade limit in that prevents people from making more than one trade offer on each side of a commodity market per hour with a one minute cancel option before the offer is released onto the market (in case they want to fix a mistake, but can't exploit it to constantly repost over and over)?

Edited March 6, 2018 by Dubayoo

[Alex]

15 hours ago, Etgfrog said:

This actually doesn't help new players, it helps old players far more because something like coal or farms you can only reach once you hit very high infrastructure. If you wanted to help new players then it would be the bonus would be distributed between each industry you have active, so if you have lead mines and munitions factories built then each would give 25% bonus. If your some whale with all 8 industries active, then it would be a 6.25% bonus.

I disagree; you only need 500 infrastructure to max out every resource production improvement (with the exception of Coal Mines and Oil Wells, each of which would require 600 infra, and Farms, which would require 1000.) Raw Resource improvements do not require power, after all.

I know larger nations will always have an advantage, but ideally prices will drop to a point where larger nations will find it more profitable to do Commerce, while smaller nations will want to focus on resource production.

8 hours ago, Big Brother said:

All I want to know is why the heck we can't see who posts bounties. Why allow people to hide? If someone posts a bounty on me, I want to be able to see who it was so I can frick up their day for having the audacity to do such a thing. You can bet your ass there'd be more wars if people were able to see who's trying to get them rolled.

Bounties are anonymous to encourage them being posted. I understand that if you knew who posted a bounty on your nation, you'd want to get them back. However, them knowing this, they probably wouldn't want to post a bounty on you in the first place.

In this system, it's easier to 'troll' each other, which I think creates more mistrust. Who just posted $100,000,000 worth of bounties on your alliance; was it your sworn enemies? Or your allies, who are plotting to turn on you? I think it creates more drama & fun in the political-sphere.

---

On the topic of the Trial Changes, I am going to remove all of them except for the Econ update on the live server after listening to the feedback here and on Discord. Obviously they all have different consequences, and it is a lot to try and stick in the game without any testing. My fear was simply that without some additional changes, nations may be too vulnerable with just the war changes that were tested, and that perhaps I and others had made an oversight during the two tournaments of testing.

In any case, I will remove those changes and post an announcement about that shortly, and we can debate their individual merits & possible other changes going forward and test them on the test server before pushing anything live.

[DragonK]

22 hours ago, Alkaline said:

Even with all the problems we have had and the concerns raised to Alex, comments like this are pretty unnecessary. This community will become as vitriolic as we allow it to become, please don't contribute to that. 

Will become?

21 hours 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. 

And you don't see the problem in that? At all?

@Insert Name Here Farmville it is.

[DragonK]

21 hours ago, Epi said:

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.

Not really. You need all your 5 slots filled. In my experience 1/5 raid targets is profitable, rest are shit. Raiding is before all else, a gamble, a sustainable, but a gamble non the less. And who in their right mind would limit himself to 2/5 of his raiding potenital to avoid a potential 1/3 of damage? So again this only helps whales, and affects pirates in a way that doesn't change much for them (except for decreased loot in general) and having more people with less hitting targets other than pirates.

[Guest Frawley]

There are good and bad things about these changes:

Two defensive wars, while I understand the rationale behind will only further entrench upper tier power, and just serves to limit the damage that whales can absorb.

On the other hand, I'm a big fan of the beige changes although I would think it more practical to have a single 'balance of power' line rather then two independant resistance lines. This should solve for your problem while allowing truly defeated people to rebuild.