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Reduce Sub 20 City Costs


The Mad Titan
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Guest Curufinwe
2 minutes ago, DragonK said:

This will greatly devalue a lot of old player's sense of achivment, since it took them 3 years to get to 20 citys and then some nobody noob makes it there in 3 months thanks to boost he gets from alliance and cheaper prices.

Well I mean you're always have your war stats if you need to derive a sense of achievement from PW...

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39 minutes ago, James XVI said:

I'm fairly sure there's more to player retention than just slow city growth (at least to the extent that is being suggested). If you can keep someone playing for ~1-2 months, chances are they'll continue playing for a while longer. Once you're reaching 9-19 cities chances are you're not really going to be in the instance where you're disheartened about nation size disparity. There's also a number of low NS alliances with a large number of these small players. If it was truly the case that people don't hang around just because growth is too slow, why do these alliances exist? The game doesn't (and shouldn't) just revolve around the largest 15-20 alliances and their playing styles, rather should be open to having some extent of difference in the hope of making things more diverse. The game isn't just about growing (or else the name wouldn't be politics and war).

Alternatively, it'd be better to extend the limit on how many cities can bypass the 10 wait timer (it's currently 5?), to perhaps 6 or 7

Until you compare the population of all those combined, counting only the actives, no red or purple diamonds, and then you realize they make up a tiny minority of the nations currently existing at that level, the players at that level, most of whom don't stick around long. The argument isn't that all new players drop, the argument is that 95% of them do. Now maybe that number isn't exactly right, i also don't think it's too far from the truth, someone feel free to get concrete numbers and prove me wrong. 


Whether or not this suggestion would make it any better... maybe. A little bit, i think, but ultimately i think it's benefit would be less to keeping new players, and more to helping the ones already here. I'm not just talking about IQ alliances, either. I'm talking smaller, newer alliances, that don't have alot of members, don't have a huge bankroll, or a garrison of whales to endlessly print money and anything else they could want. Alliances like my own, Husaria, i'd say TRF too, since TRF is mostly TCI with a dash of SGM. People that are already here, are likely to stay here, who are in these lower city counts, many of them for some time. 

When you're small like this, you can only afford so many grants, and you can push people to accept higher taxes only to so far. Truly, i don't think this would do a significant amount to keep new players. It will do a little. More than anything, i think it would help alliances, specifically the smaller ones. Yeah, IQ alliances don't have whales, but NPO for example, just has a cool 100+ at 14 cities, and their alliance has been around for a while. The only reason you should be poor, is if you're not managing your resources as well as you could. At least the little guys complain less about it, while trying to grow and not be swallowed up by you.

Now the question becomes, how badly needed, if at all needed, is something that will do a little to increase player retention, and alot to empower smaller alliances to grow, especially if they're run well. So, Orbis, is this needed, and if so, how badly? I'd say i'm a bit of a biased party, my city timer is up in 2 turns for number 10, and i'm in one of those small alliances, i'm a little blinded by self interest, just a tad.

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40 minutes ago, Ⓕurpk said:

The problem I see in shrinking the city cost sub-30 cities is the implications it could have on wars. This proposition is basically just a call to make everyone in IQ into whales to accommodate for the lack of skill within their players, citing it would help everyone else to give themselves the moral high ground. Making this an altruistic argument, or one of keeping players in, is overall a false dogma laid down by the IQ hegemon. Trust me, players don't stay in this game because they want to pixel farm, I would have left long ago because such a proposition is laughable. People stay because they love the community; it's fun to engage with your fellow Orbisians. 

Look, to propose that the growth factor among us minors is skewed in favor of whales and not us is a false statement. If you pursued growth in your alliance, you'd select your most competent members and supercharge them to a higher status, bringing up a few first than all together. Hell, if I recall correctly, you lot have ludicrous taxes on your base, that should have been enough capital to rebuild your top and middle brass, then bring up the shining stars among your lower rung. But to lobby Alex over lowering city costs to supercharge yourselves, then alluding to its many benefits while alluding briefly that somehow growth in this game is somehow too "prohibitive" is just absolutely devious, especially with your votemongering by flooding this forum with your bloc members. I see no reason why we should shift city prices from their status quo, and until you can change my mind, I stand by my argument. 

Though, I ought to give you guys credit for trying, this realpolitik move is obviously based off of historical events where the uplifting of poorer, larger groups led to the shadowing of the head honcho, like the United States and Britain, Germany and Britain, the Soviet Union and Germany, France and again Britain, China and Japan, and soon China and the United States. I'll finish this off with a quote from Lenin which should console you, "Half a century ago, Germany was a miserable, insignificant country, as far as capitalist strength was concerned, compared with the strength of England at that time. Japan was similarly insignificant compared with Russia. Is it 'conceivable' that in ten or twenty years' time the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained unchanged? Absolutely inconceivable."

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That was well written, to the point argument, addressing all that needed adressing. What are you doing on this cespool of forum? :P

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21 minutes ago, James XVI said:

I'm fairly sure there's more to player retention than just slow city growth (at least to the extent that is being suggested). If you can keep someone playing for ~1-2 months, chances are they'll continue playing for a while longer. Once you're reaching 9-19 cities chances are you're not really going to be in the instance where you're disheartened about nation size disparity. There's also a number of low NS alliances with a large number of these small players. If it was truly the case that people don't hang around just because growth is too slow, why do these alliances exist? The game doesn't (and shouldn't) just revolve around the largest 15-20 alliances and their playing styles, rather should be open to having some extent of difference in the hope of making things more diverse. The game isn't just about growing (or else the name wouldn't be politics and war).

Alternatively, it'd be better to extend the limit on how many cities can bypass the 10 wait timer (it's currently 5?), to perhaps 6 or 7

I would agree with the fact that there is indeed more to player retention than just city growth but that doesn't mean there's not an issue with the current city growth either.  I disagree completely with the second sentence because it's simply not true.  People are able to estimate that the time it takes to get to x city would take y amount of time which right now is pretty absurd.  Typically micros don't exist for very long either even if they do manage to find a bigger alliance that can help guide them along the way, they do manage to hit a plateau that requires a lot of financial backing to continue growing to get at a competitive level.  I think you're misunderstanding the correlation between city sizes and war.  If you aren't able to reach a certain city size then your ability to effectively compete/war is diminished greatly.  So yes, growth does affect war to an extent.

20 minutes ago, Ⓕurpk said:

The problem I see in shrinking the city cost sub-30 cities is the implications it could have on wars. This proposition is basically just a call to make everyone in IQ into whales to accommodate for the lack of skill within their players, citing it would help everyone else to give themselves the moral high ground. Making this an altruistic argument, or one of keeping players in, is overall a false dogma laid down by the IQ hegemon. Trust me, players don't stay in this game because they want to pixel farm, I would have left long ago because such a proposition is laughable. People stay because they love the community; it's fun to engage with your fellow Orbisians. 

Look, to propose that the growth factor among us minors is skewed in favor of whales and not us is a false statement. If you pursued growth in your alliance, you'd select your most competent members and supercharge them to a higher status, bringing up a few first than all together. Hell, if I recall correctly, you lot have ludicrous taxes on your base, that should have been enough capital to rebuild your top and middle brass, then bring up the shining stars among your lower rung. But to lobby Alex over lowering city costs to supercharge yourselves, then alluding to its many benefits while alluding briefly that somehow growth in this game is somehow too "prohibitive" is just absolutely devious, especially with your votemongering by flooding this forum with your bloc members. I see no reason why we should shift city prices from their status quo, and until you can change my mind, I stand by my argument. 

You're completely right, the implication of wars would be affected by more people able to grow into bigger city tiers which would help add to the game dynamics.  However you're construing this as a purely IQ thing when in reality if you recruit at all, you're affected by this update positively (should be most alliances even the micros).  I would say that I agree people stay within their alliances due to the community, that's not why people play the game or why people quit the game.  That's a false narrative.

Once again, it's subject to everyone and not to just IQ (unless you don't recruit).  

20 minutes ago, Rimski said:

Yeah we are the bad guys. Why was this suggestion taken in right now? After a larger IQ debt? Totes our fault for protesting on them getting off easier. Also Leo,  if you had that large ammount of players in your hands and your lied hands then how come many VM, Delete,  Make Mutinies and yada yada which leads to less positive war results. If you coordinated and worked well with your money you could have made the Members be in a good self-sustaining position so to say with decent ammounts of cities,  income and all of the above but the result js with many abandonments happening,  with less players in the game aka deleteing yada yada. I really don't need to talk much about this and exoand it

 

 

+we get it iq,  your only ways of making yourself seem superior to us is downvoting us. Great accomplishment

Does this have anything to do with the actual suggestion?  It doesn't so DM leo if you have a hard on for him :P 

16 minutes ago, WISD0MTREE said:

Low retention rates are part of the genre. Even well established games by dev studios with 3-D graphics tend to have relatively low retention rates. Look at Clash of Clans or Boom Beach. They have lots more in terms of content and even have graphics, yet their one week retention rate isn't even 40%. A game analyst who analyzed games like Temple Run said 5% after 30 days is great. Again, that is with games that an entire dev studio makes, not just Sheepy. One thing those games have that PaW doesn't is a steady stream of content. It was months between the last few wars. If you truly want increased retention, go for options to increase the frequency of wars. 

I don't think anyone is arguing that it's possible to keep everyone who joins the game to play.  It was more a way to increase retention which is the point of getting people involved faster.

14 minutes ago, Rimski said:

>claiming it is hitting on you personally because you are on the losing front

 

We've stated our opinion. The game has been like this for a long time,  why change it out of the blue? Because the last war brought a burdon on your comrades. Try making different plans for your economies and different war planes in future conflicts instead of trying to "improve the game" to your benefit

It should have been changed a while ago if we are going to be honest, it has been a problem that has been occurring for a while but that doesn't mean that because it hasn't got brought up till now that it's not a problem.  

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6 minutes ago, Curufinwe said:

First, according to Sketchy's helpful stats, players with 20 or more cities make up less than 4 percent of the overall playerbase, so I'm not sure it's reasonable to privilege their concerns over those of the 96 percent of players that are currently below 20 cities if doing so has a negative impact on retention and participation.  Second, your argument presupposes that larger players will quit because smaller ones grow, which seems like an odd assumption to make in any case since it assumes they only play because they're larger than someone else, not because they enjoy the game.  

Ironically, this only further validates my argument, that there is no logical reason for the cutoff point to be 20 cities.

20 cities is a long term goal, its not something a new player will be realistically working towards. I offered a solution that would accelerate new player growth sub 10 cities and allow new players to get into the area where the majority of the active player base lies, faster, and it was shot down by the people pushing for this suggestion. Meanwhile no one has given any valid rationale for why 20 cities is a reasonable option for cutoff, nor have any other forms of retention improvement been suggested.

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41 minutes ago, LeotheGreat said:

So you admit you dislike this for this relates to the political side and a future war that may not happen rather than concern for idea at hand, got it.

 

Literally has nothing to do with the topic at hand and is just attacking me personally. Lmao come back when you have something related to the topic.

You have not literaly read what they said and are ignoring to adress points made to this topic. So I'll try again.

What you're asking is not to benefit new players, but to benefit yourself. Saying it's for new players is a lie you use to get a political advantage over your opponents. So this has nothing to do with new players and all to do with politics. So answer the godamn points they made.

 

Even if this was about new players, it's a bad unbalanced policy that would harm older, more loyal players by devaluing their sense of achivment. Not only that but it's actually not helping the new players to get interest in the game. The game would just get easier for them while remaining same in content. The only thing you're doing is giving them easy mode that makes them think they are good until they get destroyed by elite players who actually enjoy and understand this game, and then some 100+ people delete cause the game is harder than they were comfortable with.

 

And besideds it's your side who lost both the war and the player base, so it goes to show that problem lies withing YOU and not the game mehanics. I'm tired of people whining and crying to @Alex every time they suck at the game casue someone else actuall bothered to master it. How many times did you have to nerf Arrgh to be able to stand on your own shaky feet? And what did you achive by it? Good, old, loyal players were betrayed and left the game, and were repalced by large number of noobs who enjoed how easy the game was, since there were almost no elite left to show them what this game was really about. I'd rather purge those new players who'd quit anyway in few months, than to keep them around for a year instead of people who've already played this game over a year. And besides, with all the nerfs done, this game isn't even hard to play, it takes around 100 wars to learn all the tricks. If you lack war experience, well, either do more war till you figure it our, join Arrgh and git gud, or ask Arrgh to raid your members till they git gud. Why is learning and adapting such a strange concept to all you losers who have to ask admin to change game in your favour? All you'll ever achive is force players like us to suffer for a month at best, make a few of our people ragequit, and then we'll adapt to it and destroy you again, and then either you or someone else will go and cry again how OP we are and how game needs to change to suit them better. And do you know what's funny? Most of those whiners quit the game after those changes failed to make it any easier for them to deal with us, and despite everything, here I am, still persiting, still adapting, and still destroying anyone crazy enough to challange me.

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13 minutes ago, Radoje said:


I completely disagree that we need to lower city costs, in my experience as an IA head I find it increasingly difficult to teach new members how to fight when we're constantly encouraging people to build cities instead of warchests or focusing on raiding. The removal of city timers for the first 5 cities is fine, but when you get to 5-6 cities you can't raid anymore (unless you're Arrgh), meaning you need to switch to econ build and that's where members reduce their activity. Every member is active their first 5 cities because they have to actually play the game, as soon as they have to sit around they turn to the community to keep them entertained.

This is actually a very valid point.  Most nations grow to an extent then become inactive tax farms at some point.

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I have a theory that whoever made this thread has no intention of player retention. Instead, I believe it's about allowing whatever alliance made this thread to grow their new members up faster, so when they do leave the alliance can tax them at 100% and gain more money for less work and time.

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5 minutes ago, BlackAsLight said:

I have a theory that whoever made this thread has no intention of player retention. Instead, I believe it's about allowing whatever alliance made this thread to grow their new members up faster, so when they do leave the alliance can tax them at 100% and gain more money for less work and time.

Any meaningful grants will in no way be reclaimed in one week of 100/100 before they are moved to gray. 

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This is a terrible idea. It's basically a fix for shitty econ management by AAs. Git gud scrubs.

The solution to the slow growth problem is to join an alliance whose econ people know what they're doing.

I've been here for eighteen months and I'm at 15 cities, going on city 16 because I joined an AA who know what they're doing.

But sure blame the game mechanics for your inadequacies.

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28 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

This is actually a very valid point.  Most nations grow to an extent then become inactive tax farms at some point.

Then if the argument is a lack of meaningful regular action is the cause of issues with retention, then the game would have to shift to less of an emphasis on growth and one where war is more a regular thing either by making growth less of a financial issue or by making war a lot less financially consequential. Other stuff like more player vs environment type situations(NPC nations to fight as objectives) would also help with retention. Over time as the average city count went up and the costs associated with warring went up, war became less frequent and there's no real denying it. 

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24 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

The other issue I have with this particular request is the fact people assume it would retain players.  I disagree with that entirely.  It'll help them grow, sure, but if retention is something you want - that's entirely on the alliances themselves (All of us, as a community).  Most new players will decide whether the game is worth while to invest time in or not within their first 5 cities of growth.  Making it easier for them to climb to 10 cities won't make or break that decision.  They'll see how slow this game progresses in general, the lack of community involvement, or the limited efforts they have unless the alliance they're in is at war (War is literally the only thing in this game that involves everybody).  If they enjoy a community of players, they'll stick around regardless of how slow things are.  We, as leaders in the game, just need to make sure they know the expectation of the game and keep up with them throughout the weeks/months of playing.

 

Sidenote:  I'm not entirely opposed to this.  I agree that something should be done to help new players keep up with the older ones.  I disagree with the "up to 20" cities bit, but I certainly won't turn it away either as I'll directly benefit from it myself too.  Again though, Sketchy's idea actually targets new players where politics isn't involved, and it would massively help those micro alliances.

You're not really seeing it in the way a newer player sees it as which is understandable.  The issue as I have stated previously is more so the amount of time/investment monetarily that it requires to get to a competitive level such as 20.  If you think 20 is too high then perhaps there's some merit in that argument that we can lower the limit from 20 to something more reasonable to everyone.  I haven't really seen anyone outside a couple that have been willing to actually argue the suggestion so I'm not entirely convinced of reducing the suggestion.  I believe the argument isn't really being understood perhaps?  My thoughts at least are the fact that if people can reach a certain city tier that they can actively participate more actively in wars and be more competitive instead of waiting for a ridiculous amount of time AND requiring a significant amount of financial backing.  The more small alliances can't afford it and those types of alliances need to be brought more into the fold easier to foster more dynamic plays on the meta however it's really hard to do currently.  Like you said, something needs to be done so people can be more actively involved in the game and be more competitive.  That's the point in my opinion.

22 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

It doesn't increase the cost of investment at all, there is no rule that says alliances have to immediately build new players to 5 cities, let alone 10. Its fairly easy to create a structured time-based econ program. You also didn't address the cheap infrastructure component, nor did you address why 20 cities is somehow a reasonable cutoff point considering that is a long term goal.

People have had minimum city counts prior to the update that moved the city timer up, and new players have always been a risky investment. Not sure where you are going with this line of reasoning.

This is then an argument about war ranges and war mechanics and not an argument about growth. Because you didn't even address the obvious improvements to growth in my suggestion for new players (which the whole point of this thread was to increase retention by increasing growth).  The difference is my solution doesn't unfairly advantage people in a key range (14-17), whilst disadvantaging a different one (20+). It instead puts the focus on the actual noobs (less than 10 cities). 

As for the first sentence, It sounds like you are making that claim and not inferring I made it, if that is the case, then my solution addresses that. By reducing infrastructure and land costs in sub 10 cities, whilst removing the city timer, it will accelerate the growth process for all nations under 10 cities, whilst not unfairly disadvantaging larger players who can also make use of said bonus to rebuild those cities faster etc.

If this suggestion was targetted at player retention, then its worth noting that I disagree with the premise that this is the primary reason for low retention rates. Some people don't like nation simulators, just not their speed, and the only way you stand a chance of capturing that audience is by creating engaging ways to keep those players interested on a day to day basis whilst still not majorly disadvantaging the more casual playerbase.

 

The point of the whole suggestion to get newer people to a competitive level within a reasonable amount of time which isn't do-able especially as a smaller AA.  Infrastructure isn't really the main issue when going up in city tiers, it's mostly city costs once you reach a certain level which is really dependent on your AA size/abilities.  

Wars have a direct correlation with the ability to get to a city tier that competes with other city tiers.  You can still only build three cities per month so in reality even if it was cheaper to go to 20 cities it'd still take over half a year unless they utilized credits.  That's still a decent amount of time of game play to reach that level and if you compare it to currently it's much more reasonable. 

The reason I didn't address your comment about making it go from 5 to 10 is the fact that smaller AAs still can't just magically afford it which is the entire point.  It only really helps those that can afford it which isn't beneficial to the newcomers so it's not a viable option at all.  Adding randomness(newer AAs) to the fold adds to the meta which should be the point.

7 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

Ironically, this only further validates my argument, that there is no logical reason for the cutoff point to be 20 cities.

20 cities is a long term goal, its not something a new player will be realistically working towards. I offered a solution that would accelerate new player growth sub 10 cities and allow new players to get into the area where the majority of the active player base lies, faster, and it was shot down by the people pushing for this suggestion. Meanwhile no one has given any valid rationale for why 20 cities is a reasonable option for cutoff, nor have any other forms of retention improvement been suggested.

How long term does it realistically need to be though?  I don't think currently it's realistic for new players to reach it within a reasonable amount of time.

10 minutes ago, Marianna said:

This is a terrible idea. It's basically a fix for shitty econ management by AAs. Git gud scrubs.

The solution to the slow growth problem is to join an alliance whose econ people know what they're doing.

I've been here for eighteen months and I'm at 15 cities, going on city 16 because I joined an AA who know what they're doing.

But sure blame the game mechanics for your inadequacies.

It has nothing to do with anything you said and this really didn't do anything besides make you look more biased and didn't actually provide analysis of the suggestion and a proper counter.

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1 hour ago, Curufinwe said:

A) First, according to Sketchy's helpful stats, players with 20 or more cities make up less than 4 percent of the overall playerbase, so I'm not sure it's reasonable to privilege their concerns over those of the 96 percent of players that are currently below 20 cities if doing so has a negative impact on retention and participation.  Second, your argument presupposes that larger players will quit because smaller ones grow, which seems like an odd assumption to make in any case since it assumes they only play because they're larger than someone else, not because they enjoy the game.  

You're completely missing what I'm saying: Those 4% or so players with more than 20 cities are where it is at right now. But if you make it so that it's super easy to get up to the level of the top players, then everyone that thus becomes a top player has the same problem that those 4% immediately would, which is that all of their effort is meaningless and wasted since any little noob can just get right up to their level just as easily. Thus, no incentive to put in effort, since it accomplishes nothing for those that work harder.

Effort should be incentivized, not spoonfed. It's not like you can't make a meaningful contribution at 12-16 cities anyway.

8 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Then if the argument is a lack of meaningful regular action is the cause of issues with retention, then the game would have to shift to less of an emphasis on growth and one where war is more a regular thing either by making growth less of a financial issue or by making war a lot less financially consequential. Other stuff like more player vs environment type situations(NPC nations to fight as objectives) would also help with retention. Over time as the average city count went up and the costs associated with warring went up, war became less frequent and there's no real denying it. 


You're misinterpreting the correlation. Wars become less frequent because of the unstable equilibrium problem, not because there's more resources floating around to fight with and to destroy. This really, really should be obvious.

8 minutes ago, Seeker said:

It has nothing to do with anything you said and this really didn't do anything besides make you look more biased and didn't actually provide analysis of the suggestion and a proper counter.

Biased he may be, but his point remains: His city count is going up without the need for the admin to make it easier.

Just because his alliance is capable of it doesn't mean it's impossible, and that really, really should be obvious.

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55 minutes ago, Seeker said:

I don't think anyone is arguing that it's possible to keep everyone who joins the game to play.  It was more a way to increase retention which is the point of getting people involved faster.

If Leo's rate (below) is correct, we're already at the rate where video game professionals say is great in the links I provided. You're also making the assumption that more cities = more involvement. I'd counter and state that with the exception of gov, most whale-tier players log in once a day and spend a few minutes to make trade offers and do what gov asks. On the contrary, new players have the tutorial and aim to complete those objectives and also have many more raiding opportunities, which is more time consuming and engaging. 

1 hour ago, LeotheGreat said:

Kastor is right, this is to address poor player retention. P&W has something like a 95% burnout rate. One of the reasons is that it takes literal years to catch up to players. Cheaper cities makes noobs a better investment for all alliances, and lets new player become functional much quicker.

 

1 hour ago, Curufinwe said:

ii) Previous updates focused more on infra costs and cooldowns for sub-5 city nations.  Although city costs were cut, the OP is suggesting a more significant decrease than was the case in the past, which may indeed have a positive impact. 

Plus, even if it doesn't, it still has the positive impact of allowing more of the existing players (from all AAs) to particular in a meaningful way more quickly, which is good for everyone involved.

IIRC, those were in separate updates. 

Again, new players have the tutorial and aim to complete those objectives and also have many more raiding opportunities, which is more time consuming and engaging than trading once a day (with the exception of gov). You're also making the assumption that there is absolutely no downside, which is simply not the case as shown below. 

1 hour ago, DragonK said:

This will greatly devalue a lot of old player's sense of achivment, since it took them 3 years to get to 20 citys and then some nobody noob makes it there in 3 months thanks to boost he gets from alliance and cheaper prices.

 

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1 minute ago, WISD0MTREE said:

If Leo's rate (below) is correct, we're already at the rate where video game professionals say is great in the links I provided. You're also making the assumption that more cities = more involvement. I'd counter and state that with the exception of gov, most whale-tier players log in once a day and spend a few minutes to make trade offers and do what gov asks. On the contrary, new players have the tutorial and aim to complete those objectives and also have many more raiding opportunities, which is more time consuming and engaging. 

That's not at all what I stated, I however did say that new people being able to compete in high tiers would allow them to get more involved in the game which should allow them to stay more vested in the game.

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Just now, Seeker said:

That's not at all what I stated, I however did say that new people being able to compete in high tiers would allow them to get more involved in the game which should allow them to stay more vested in the game.

There's only a small percentage of players in the upper tiers, and with the score system being what it is, those players can only directly engage in battle with other upper tier players.

'Being in the high tiers' is not at all equivalent to 'being more involved in the game' or 'being able to make meaningful contributions'.

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2 hours ago, Theodosius said:

Or here's another revolutionary idea: not brigade upvotes and virtue signal to Alex about retention when this has little to no effect on it, and instead learn how not to suck at Econ.

I have an even better idea: Don't brigade downvotes on everything we post, hypocrite.

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"I VM due to timezone differences" -Reuben Cheuk

 

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Just now, element85 said:

I have an even better idea: Don't brigade downvotes on everything we post, hypocrite.

Than how about you stop brigading upvotes on everything you post :D 

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3 minutes ago, Seeker said:

The point of the whole suggestion to get newer people to a competitive level within a reasonable amount of time which isn't do-able especially as a smaller AA.  Infrastructure isn't really the main issue when going up in city tiers, it's mostly city costs once you reach a certain level which is really dependent on your AA size/abilities.  

Wars have a direct correlation with the ability to get to a city tier that competes with other city tiers.  You can still only build three cities per month so in reality even if it was cheaper to go to 20 cities it'd still take over half a year unless they utilized credits.  That's still a decent amount of time of game play to reach that level and if you compare it to currently it's much more reasonable. 

The reason I didn't address your comment about making it go from 5 to 10 is the fact that smaller AAs still can't just magically afford it which is the entire point.  It only really helps those that can afford it which isn't beneficial to the newcomers so it's not a viable option at all.  Adding randomness(newer AAs) to the fold adds to the meta which should be the point.

How long term does it realistically need to be though?  I don't think currently it's realistic for new players to reach it within a reasonable amount of time.

And my counter proposal does just that. If you shorten the amount of time it takes for you to grow to 10 cities, you by default shorten the amount of time it takes to grow to 12, 15 or even 20 longterm. You are talking about a "competitive level", when 10 cities is right around when nations start to become relevant to war statistics. This might not be as apparent in the current climate when a single political grouping holds the monopoly on that area.

Reducing the cost of infrastructure, reduces the initial cost of investment to get a larger return, which inevitably accelerates growth of people sub 10 cities. The only difference is it doesn't happen at the expense of those with 11 or more cities.

You right in the previous paragraph, criticized the length of time it takes to build cities without credits, and then in the next, dismissed the suggestion to extend the timer. Extending the timer would address the issue.

As for the argument about smaller AAs, that is an invalid criticism. Smaller AAs make a choice to sacrifice potential growth for in many cases political autonomy, their own community, theme, or leadership goals/style. Evening out the disparity in growth between a small AA and a large AA is unfairly handicapping one type of alliance over another based on that alliances choices. And I assume we aren't talking about micros, because if anything, micros HURT player retention in this game, they don't help it.

Smaller AAs can combat this by finding a solid protector and proving their value, and perhaps getting funding for their growth, or a meticulously planned econ program can help them to gain over the more stagnant older alliances who grow fairly slow compared to their potential.

How long term should it realistically be? A better question is how short term should it realistically be. Since Leo hasn't actually provided any specific numbers, I can't know how easy he thinks getting to 20 cities should be. Regardless, as someone earlier in the thread pointed out, its possible to do it within a year.

If this suggestion was truly targeted at improving growth and retention for new players, it would find ways to accelerate growth at the bottom, without unfairly disadvantaging those at the top, and without giving a clear advantage to people in a range that have been playing for a long time and have no retention issues (14-17). I see a lot of accusations of bias on both sides of this argument, but I'm still waiting on someone to address my point about why 20 cities is a reasonable cutoff, or provide some sort of revised proposal that addresses the fairly obvious flaws in the argument. 

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